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SELECT. SPEECHES 



Hon. GEO. W. JULIAN, 



oip UNnDi-A-Hsr^^., 



Delirerrd hi fJte House of Iteprescniatirrn of flic VnitctJ Sfafrs, 
since the Beginninr/ of the late Rebel/ iov. 



CINCINNATI: 

OAZKTTE STEAM ROOK AXI) JOB PKINTTNO ESTAP.T.TSnM K>fT. 
1807. 



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K/EJ^X) JL1<T1D I=I?.E!SEK.VE! 



SELECT SPEECHES 



OP 



j7 Sr 



HON. GEO. W. JULIAN, 



o:f ii^iDi^isr^, 



jyellvered in the House of Representatives of the United States, since 
the Beginning of the late Mebellion, 



CINCINNATI: 

GAZETTB STEAM BOOK AND JOB PRINTING ESTABLISHMENT. 
1867. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



The friends of Mr. Julian in the District he has so long and so faithfully represented, 
earnestly desiring his continuance in Congress, have deemed it proper to republish the 
following Congressional Speeches, delivered since the beginning of the late rebellion, and 
circulate them in the Counties now united with Wayne, Union, and Fayette, as the new 
Fourth District. The reason for this is their desire that his sagacity, statesmanship, and 
faithfulness to his trust, shall be judged in the light of present events, and by his own 
principles, publicly avowed long before they were accepted by the Government. His ablest 
and most elaborate Speech, delivered January 14th, 1862, on the "Cause and Cure of our 
National Troubles," is omitted from this series, having been considerably circulated already 
in the counties referred to. His next Speech, delivered in May following, on " Confiscation 
and Liberation," is similar in style and character, and is the first of the series. That 
delivered in February, 1863, on the "Mistakes of the Past, the duty of the Present," is a 
merciless review of "Democratic policy," as seen in the facts and figures which had been 
supplied by the investigations of the Commttee on the Conduct of the War. The next is a 
very thorough one, delivered in the winter of 1863-4, on his bill to provide "Homesteads for 
Soldiers on the Lands of Ecbels," which was followed by another on the same subject, 
involving a controversy with Mr. Mallory, of Kentucky^ who met with a most humilia- 
ting defeat. The next of the series was delivered the following winter, on " Radicalism and 
Conservatism," closing with a handsome and eloquent tribute to the Anti-Slavery pioneers. 
The remaining Speeches, all delivered during the Thirty-ninth Congress, on " Suffrage in 
the District of Columbia," on " Amending the Constitution," on "Radicalism, the Nation's 
Hope," on "The Punishment of Rebel Leaders," and on " Regeneration before Reconstruc- 
tion," add still further to his reputation as a thinker, and a perfectly independent man, who 
knows how to say what he thinks. All his Speeches breath the same spirit of freedom, and 
have the merit of careful thought, methodical arrangement, and a remarkable clear and 
forcible diction. 

The leading facts of Mr. Julian's career as a public man, are so well known, that no 
particular recital of them is needed by his old friends and constituents. He was an active 
leader in the Great Free Soil Revolt of 1848, which made California a free State; saved 
Oregon from Slavery ; gave cheap postage to the people, and launched the policy of free 
homes on the public domain, which finally prevailed so many years later. He was a 
member of the memorable Thirty-first Congress, and bravely resisted the Great Compro- 
mise, by which the Wilmot Proviso was sacrificed, and the principle of popular sovereignty 
inaugurated, which ended in the raid into Kansas and kindred aggressions of Slavery. In 
1852, his services and reputation received honorable national recognition in his nomination 
by the Pittsburg Convention for the Vice Presidency of the United States, on the ticket 
with the Hon. John P. Hale. In the years 1854 and 1855, he encountered the relentless 
hostility of his opponents and his former political friends, by his earnest warfare against 
Know-Nothingism, which he waged till this strange movement ceased to trouble our 
politics. In 1856 he was one of the Vice Presidents of the first National Republican 
Convention ever held, and Chairman of the Committee on Organization, through whose 
plan of action, the party, as a national one, first took life. He has been the unflinching 
advocate of freedom under all circumstances, and regardless of consequences personal to 
himself; and this honor, we believe, is now accorded to him, by men of all parties. He was 
a member of the Committee on Public Lands, in the Thirty-seventh Congress, and aided 
in perfecting the Homestead law of 1862, embodying a policy which he publicly espoused 
twenty years ago. During the Thirty-eighth and Thirty-ninth Congress he was Chairman 



of that Committee, and as such reported an important amendment to the Homestead law, 
and his well known bill dedicating to homestead entry and settlement all the public lands 
of the lately rebellious States, both of which measures passed. He also reported from the 
same Committee, a bill which passed the House, providing "homesteads for soldiers on the 
lands of rebels;" a very popular measure, which would have solved many vexed questions 
which have troubled the country since. Early in the Thirty-seventh Congress he was 
appointed by Speaker Grow, a member of the joint Committee of both Houses, on the 
Conduct of the the War, to which very honorable and responsible position, he was 
re-appointed by Speaker Colfax at the beginning of the Thiry-eighth Congress, serving 
faithfully on said Committee, nearly four years. He has dealt very thoroughly with the 
subject of mineral lands, insisting upon the policy of vesting the fee of these lands in the 
miners; which policy has finally prevailed. His report at the long session of the last 
Congress, against granting bounties to soldiers in lands, showing the reasons for opposing such 
grants, first opened the way for the legislation which followed, and was the prime cause of 
it, granting bounties in money. It should be added, that his well-timed bill on the subject 
of Agricultural College scrip, which passed at the March session of the Fortieth Congress, 
arrested and prevented the wholesale issue of such scrip by the President, to the Statss 
lately in rebellion. 

In addition to the important measures introduced and advocated by him, already named, 
we might mention the bill repealing the fugitive slave law of 1850, and of 1793 ; that abolish- 
ing the coast-wise slave trade; the bill equalizing the bounties of soldiers on the basis of 
eight and one-third dollars per month, in lieu of bounties in land; the bill establishing the 
right of sufl:rage in the District of Columbia, without regard to color or race; the bill 
establishing the same principle in all the Territories of the United States, being the first 
introduced in either House of Congress on the subject ; and the bill now pending, declaring 
the railroad and swamp lands of the South, and the public lands of Texas, forfeited to the 
United States, and subject to homestead entry and settlement by the landless poor. It is 
scarcely necessary to add, that all the great measures growing out of, or connected with the 
rebellion, have found in him an earnest supporter ; and that he has not only zealously 
sustained the Government in all its grand measures of radicalism, such as the confiscation 
of rebel property, the arming of negroes as soldiers, and the destruction of slavery, but he 
has taken a decidedly advanced position on these questions. Applying his radicalism at 
the end of the war, he has been among the most pronounced and emphatic of those who 
have demanded the punishment of rebel leaders, and the complete enfranchisement of the 
freedmeu ; whilst the late action of Congress on the subject of reconstruction, fully vindicates 
the position assumed by him and other radicals early in the war, as to the power of Congress 
over the revolted districts. 

This brief record, principally copied from "W. H. Goddard's " Sketches of the Indiana 
Delegation,'' published in pamphlet last year, is submitted with the Speeches which follow; 
and the Republicans of the Fourth District will decide, in the light of their own interest, 
and the still imperiled condition of our country, whether they will continue in Congress a 
capable, faithful, and thoroughly tried public servant, or choose in his stead another, of less 
experience, less identified with great national issues, and whose fidelity to the people under 
every form of trial has been less unmistakably established. 

S. S. BOYD, DANIEL HUFF, 

IRA MAXWELL, WOODSON W. THRASHER, 

JOSEPH M. BULLA, SYLVESTER JOHNSON, 

BENJAMIN F. MILLER, JOHN CALLAWAY, 

DAVID COMMONS, H. B. RUPE, 

RICHARD J. HUBBARD, HOWELL GRAVE, 

SAMUEL LITTLE, JOHN HENLEY. 



oonsriFiso^Tioisr j^js^jd XjiBEi$.j^Tionsr. 



Hon. aEOEG-E ^Y. JTJLIAISr, 

In the house OF KEPKESENTATIVES, Friday, May 23, 1862. 



The House having under consideration the 
bill to confiscate the property and free from 
servitude the slaves of rebels — 

Mr. Julian said : 

Mr. Speaker : Before closing the debate 
on the measures of confiscation and liberation 
now before us, I desire to submit some general 
observations which I hope may not be regard- 
ed as irrelevant to these topics, or wholly 
unworthy of consideration. I do not propose 
to discuss these particular measures. I deem 
it wholly unnecessary. I believe every thing 
has been said, on the one side and on the 
other, which can be said, and far more than 
was demanded by an honest search after the 
truth. Certainly I shall not argue, at any 
length, the power of Congress to confiscate 
the property of rebels. I take it for granted. 
I have not allowed myself, for a single mo- 
ment, toregard the question as open to debate, 
nor do I believe it would ever have been se- 
riously controverted, had it not been for the 
infectious influence of slavery in giving us 
false views of the Constitution of the United 
States. It was ordained " to form a more per- 
fect union, establish justice, insure domestic 
tranquillity, provide for the common defence, 
promote the general welfare, and secure the 
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our pos- 
terity." I take it for granted, that our fath- 
ers meant to confer, and did confer upon us, 
by the terms of the Constitution, the power 
to execute these grand purposes, and made 
adequate provision for the exercise of that 
power. I feel entirely safe in indulging this 
reasonable intendment in their favor; and I 
hand over to other gentlemen on this floor, 
and in the other end of this Capitol, the un- 
gracious task of dealing with the Constitution 
as a cunningly devised scheme for permitting 
insurrections, conniving at civil war, and 
rendering treason to the Government safer 
than loyalty. 

Sir, I have little sympathy for any such 
friends of the Union, and I honor the Consti- 
tution too much, and regard the memory of 
its founders too sacredly, to permit myself 
thus to trifle with the work of their hands. 
The Constitution is not a shield for the pro- 
tection of rebels against the Government, but 
a sword for smiting them to the earth, and 
preserving the nation' 3 life. Every man who 



has been blessed with a moderate share of 
common sense, and who really loves his coun- 
try, will accept this as an obvious truth. 
Congress has power — 

"To declare war; to grant letters of marque and 
reprisal ; to make rules concerning captures on land 
and water; to raise and support aimies; to pi'ovide 
and maintain a navy ; to make rules for the jiovern- 
ment and regulation of the land and naval forces ; to 
provide for calling forlh the militia to execute the 
laws of the Union ; suppress insurrections and repel 
invasions ; and to make all laivs which shall he necessary 
and proper for carrying into effect the foregoing powers. 

Here we find ample and express authority 
for any and every measure which Congress 
may see fit to employ, consistently with the 
law of nations and the usages of war, which 
fully recognise the power of confiscation. 
And yet for long, weary months we have 
been arguing, doubting, hesitating, depreca- 
ting. 

As to what is called slave property, wft 
have been most fastidiously careful not to 
harm it. "We have seen a lion in our path at 
every step. "We have seemed to play the part 
of graceless stipendiaries of slaveholding reb- 
els, seeking, by technical subterfuges and the 
ingenious arts of pensioned attorneys in des- 
perate cases, to shield their precious interests 
from all possible mischief. So long have we 
been tugging in the harness of our southern 
taskmasters, that even this horrid conspiracy 
of rebel slave-masters cannot wholly divorce 
us from the idea that slij^ry and the Consti- 
tution are one and insefffrable. Sir, while I 
honor the present Congress for its great labors 
and the many good deeds it has performed, I 
must yet count it a shame and a reproach 
that we did not promptly enact an efficient 
confiscation bill in December last, which 
would have gone hand in hand with our con- 
quering legions in the work of trampling 
down the power of this rebellion, and restor- 
ing our bleeding and distracted country to 
the blessings of peace. Many thousands of 
dear lives and many millions of money would 
thus have been spared ; for which a poor 
atonement, indeed, can be found in the learned 
constitutional arguments against confiscation, 
which have consumed so much of the time of 
the present session of Congress. 

Mr. Speaker, this never ending gabble 
about the sacredness of the Constitution is 
becoming intolerable; and it comes from ex- 



ccedincjly svispioious sources. We find that 
just in proportion as a man loves slavery, and 
desires to exalt it above all "principalities 
and powers," he becomes most devoutly in 
love with the Constitution as he understands 
it. No class of men among us have so much 
to say about the Constitution as those who are 
known to sympathize with Jefferson Davis 
and the pirate crew at his heels. It will not 
be forgotten that the red-handed murderers 
and thieves who set this rebellion on foot, 
went out of the Union yelping for the Con- 
stitution, which they had conspired to over- 
throw, through the blackest perjury and 
treason that ever confronted the Almighty. 
I remember no men who were so zealously 
on the side of the Constitution, or so studi- 
ously careful to save it from detriment as 
Bre'';kinridge and Burnett, while they re- 
mained nominally on the side of the Union. 
Every graceless miscreant who has wallowed 
in the filthy mire of slavery till he has out- 
lived his own conscience ; every man who 
would be openly on the side of the rebels if he 
had the courage to take his stand ; every op- 
ponent of a vigorous prosecution of the war 
by the use of all the powers of war, will be 
found fulminating his dastardly diatribes on 
the duty of standing by the Constitution. I 
notice, also — and I do not mean to be offen- 
sive — that the Democratic leaders who have 
recently issued a semi-rebel address from this 
city, are most painfully exercised lest the 
Constitution should suffer in the hands of the 
present Administration. 

Mr. Speaker, I prefer to muster in different 
company. I prefer to show my fealty to the 
Constitution by treating it as the charter of 
liberty, as the foe of rebellion, and as amply 
armed with the power to save its own life by 
crushing its foes. Sir, who are these men in 
whose behalf the Constitution is so persist- 
ently invoked ? They are rebels, who have 
defied its power, and who, by taking their 
stand outside of the Constitution, have driven 
us to meet them on their own chosen ground. 
By abdicating the Constitution, and conspir- 
ing against the Government, they have as- 
sumed the character of public enemies, and 
have thus no rights but the rights of war, 
while in dealing with them we are bound by 
no laws but the laws of war. Those provis- 
ions of the Constitution which define the 
rights of persons in time of peace, and which 
must be observed in dealing with criminals, 
have no application whatever to a state of 
war, in which criminals acquire the character 
of enemies. The powers of war are not un- 
constitutional, because they are recognized 
and provided for by the Constitution ; but 
their function and exercise are to be regula- 
ted by the law of nations governing a state of 
war, and not by the terms of the Constitution 
applicable to a state of peace. Hence I must 
regard much of this clamor about the viola- 
tion of the Constitution on our part as the 
sickly higgling of pro-slavery fanatics, or the 
poorly disguised rebel sympathy of snivelling 
hypocrites. We must fight traitors where 



thoy have chosen to meet us. They have 
treated the Constitution as no longer in force, 
and we should give them all the consequen- 
ces, in full, of their position. By sotting the 
Constitution at naught, they have rested their 
case on tlie naked power of lawless might ; 
and, therefore, we will not give them due 
process of law, by trying, convicting, and 
hanging them according to the Constitution 
they have abjured, but we will give them, 
abundantly, due process of luar, for which 
the Constitution makes wise and ample pro- 
vision. 

I have referred, Mr. Speaker, to the influ- 
ence of slavery in giving us false views of the 
Constitution. It has also given us false ideas 
as to the character and purposes of the war. 
We are fighting, it is said, for the Union as it 
was. Sir, I should be glad to know what we 
are to understand by this. If it means that 
these severed and belligerent States must 
againbe united as one and inseparable, with 
secession forever laid low, the national supre- 
macy vindicated, and the old flag waving over 
every State and every rood of the Eepublic, 
then I agree to the proposition. Every true 
Union man will say amen to it. But if, by 
the Union as it was, wc are to understand the 
Unioii as we beheld it under the thieving 
Democracy of the last Administration, with 
such men as Davis, Eloyd, Mason, and their 
God-forsaken confederates, restored to their 
places in Congress, in the army, and in the 
Cabinet; if it means that the reign of terror 
which prevailed in the Southern States for 
years prior to this rebellion shall be re-estab- 
lished, by which unoflending citizens of the 
free States can only enter "the sacred soil" 
of slaverj'^ at the peril of life ; if, by the Union 
as it was, be meant the Union with another 
James Buchanan as its king, and Chief Jus- 
tice Taney as its anointed high-priest, steadily 
gravitating, by the weight of its own rotten- 
ness, into the frightful vortex of civil war; 
then I am not for the Union as it was, but as 
I believe it will be, when this rebellion shall 
have worked out its providential lesson. I 
confess that I look rather to the future than 
the past; but if I must cast my eye back- 
ward, I shall select the early administrations 
of the Government, when the chains of the 
slave were crumbling from his limbs, and be- 
fore the Constitution of 1789 had been muti- 
lated by the servile Democracy of a later 
generation. 

Mr. Speaker, this clamor for the Union as 
it was, comes from men who believe in the 
divinity of slavery. It comes from those who 
would restore slavery in this District if they 
dared ; who would put back the chains upon 
every slave made free \)j our Army ; wlio 
would completely re-establish the slave power 
over the national Government as in the evil 
days of the past, which have culminated at 
last in the present bloody strife, and who are 
now exhorting us to "leave off agitating the 
negro question, and attend to the work of 
putting down the rebellion." Sir, the people 
of the loyal States understand this question. 



They know that slavery lies at thehottom of 
all our troubles. They know that hut for this 
curse, this horrid revolt against liberty and 
law would not have occurred. They know 
that all the unutterable agonies of our many 
battle-fields, all the terrible sorrows which 
rend so many thousands of loving hearts, all 
the ravages and desolation of this stupendous 
conflict are to be charged to slavery. They 
know that its barbarism has moulded the 
leaders of this rebellion into the most atro- 
cious scoundrels of the nineteenth century, or 
of any century or age of the world. They 
know that it gives arsenic to our soldiers, 
mocks at the agonies of wounded enemies, 
fires on defenceless women and children, 
plants torpedoes and infernal machines in its 
path, boils the dead bodies of our soldiers in 
cauldrons, so that it may make drinking cups 
of their skulls, spurs of their jaw bones and 
finger joints, as holiday presents for "the 
first families of Virginia," and the "descend- 
ants of the daughters of Pocahontas." They 
know that it has originated whole broods of 
crimes never enacted in all the ages of the 
past, and that, were it possible, Satan himself 
would now be ashamed of his achievements, 
and seek a change of occupation. They know 
that it hatches into life, under its infernal 
incubation, the very scum of all the villanies 
and abominations that ever defied God or 
cursed his footstool. And they know that it 
is just as impossible for them to pass through 
the fiery trials of this war without feeling 
that slavery is their grand antagonist, as it is 
for a man to hold his breath and live. 

Sir, the loyal people of these States will not 
only think about slavery and talk about it, 
during the progress of this war, but they will 
seek earnestly to use the present opportunity 
to get rid of it forever. Nothing can possi- 
bly sanctify the trials and sufterings through 
which we are called to pass but the perma- 
nent establishment of liberty and peace. If 
this is not a war of ideas, it is not a war to be 
defended. As a mere struggle for political 
power between opposing States, of a mere 
question of physical strength or courage, it 
becomes impious in the light of its horrid bap- 
tism of fire and blood. It would rank with 
the senseless and purposeless wars between 
the despotisms of the Old World, bring with 
it nothing of good for freedom or the race. 
What I said on this floor in January last, I 
repeat here now, that the mere suppression of 
this rebellion will be an empty mockery of 
our sufi^erings and sacrifices, if slavery shall 
be spared to canker the heart of the nation 
anew, and repeat its diabolical deeds. Sir, 
the people of the United States and the ar- 
mies of the United States, are not the unrea- 
soning machines of arbitrary power, but the 
intelligent champions of free institutions, vol- 
untarily espousing the side of the Union upon 
principle. They know, as does the civilized 
world, that the rebels are fighting to diffuse 
and eternise slavery, and that that purpose 
must be met by a manly and conscientious 
resistance. They feel that 

" Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just." 



and that nothing can " ennoble fight" but a 
"noble cause.'' Mr. Speaker, I can conceive 
of nothing more monstrously absurd, or more 
flagrantly recreant, than the idea of conduct- 
ing this war against a slaveholders' rebellion 
as if slavery had no existence. The madness 
of such a policy strikes me as next to infinite. 
Here are more than a million of men called 
into deadly strife by the struggle of this black 
power to diflase itself over the continent, and 
strike down the cause of free government 
everywhere, deluging these otherwise happy 
States with suftering and death without par- 
allel in the history of the world; and yet so 
far has this power perverted the judgment 
and debauched the conscience of the country, 
that we are seriously exhorted to make still 
greater sacrifices, in order to placate its spirit 
and spare its life. I thank God that such a 
policy is simply impossible. The hearts of 
the people of the free States, and of the sold- 
iers we have sent into the field, beat for liberty; 
and without their love of liberty, and the be- 
lief that it is now in deadly pei-il, the rebel- 
lion would have triumphed, just as the struggle 
of our fathers, in 1776, would have ended in 
failure, if it had been possible to make them 
ignore the great question of human rights 
which nerved their arms and fired their 
hearts. 

My colleague, [Mr.VooRHEES,]in his .speech 
the other day, was quite eloquent in his con- 
demnation of the financial management of 
this war, and quite painstaking in his eflTort 
to show the magnitude of the debt it is crea- 
ting. He would do well to remember that 
when Mr. Chase took charge of the Treasury, 
the Government could only borrow money by 
paying one per cent, per month, while Uni- 
ted States six per cent, bonds are now at two 
per cent, premium over American gold. As 
to the immense burden which this war is heap- 
ing upon us, it has been chiefly caused by the 
mistaken policy of tenderness towards the 
rebels, and immunity for their pet institution ; 
and this policy has been steadily and strenu- 
ously urged by my colleague and his Demo- 
cratic associates. It has been far less the 
fault of the Administration than some of our 
commanding generals, and of conservative 
gentlemen in both Houses of Congress, who 
have sought by every means in their power 
to accommodate the war policy of the Gov- 
ernment to the equivocal loyalty of the border 
States. Many precious lives, and many mil- 
lions of money were sacrificed by the military 
policy which neither allowed the army of the 
Potomac to march against the enemy, nor go 
into winter quarters during the dreary months 
which pi'eceded the order of the Piesident, 
directing a combined movement on the 22d 
of February last. The policy of delay which 
has also sought to spare slavery, was never 
accepted by the President of his own choice, 
but under the influence of those both in and 
out of the army in whom he reposed confi- 
dence at the time. 

I rejoice now to find events all drifting in 
a ditferent direction. I believe rebels and 
outlaws are to be dealt with according to their 



8 



character. I trust slavery is not much longer 
to be spared. Congress has already sanc- 
tioned the policy of gradual abolition, as 
recommended by the President, who himself 
recognizes slavery as the grand obstacle to 
peace. We have abolished slavery in this 
District, and thus branded it with national 
reprobation. We have prohibited it in all 
national territory, now owned or hereafter to 
be acquired. We have enacted a new article 
of war, prohibiting our army from aiding in 
the recapture of fugitives, and I trust we 
shall promptly repeal the fugitive slave law 
of 1850, or at least suspend its operation dur- 
ing the rebellion. We have given freedom 
to multitudes of slaves through our confisca- 
tion act of last July,and by receiving them into 
ouv camps and retaining them in our service. 
We have enacted the homestead bill, which 
Rt once recognizes the inalienable rights of 
the people and the dignity of labor, and thus 
brands the slave power as no act of the nation 
ever did before. Since that power has ceased 
to dominate in Congress, we are perfecting, 
and shall soon pass a bill for the construction 
of a Pacific railroad, and another for the 
abolition of Polj'^gamy in Utah. Our watch- 
words are now — Freedom, Progress. 

Those patriotic gentlemen who have been 
anxious to hang "abolitionists," as equally 
guilty with the rebels are changing their 
tune. We are reconsidering the folly of deal- 
ing with rebels as "misguided brethren," 
who must not be exasperated, and while we 
shall not imitate their barbarities, we are 
learning to apply to their case the gospel of 
'an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." 
We are waging w'ar in earnest ; we are begin- 
ning to love freedom almost as dearly as the 
rebels love slavery; we are animated by a 
measure of that resentment which the rebel- 
lion demanded in the very beginning, and has 
constantly invoked during the progress of 
the war ; and when these troubles are passed 
tlie people will honor most those who have 
sought to crush the rebellion by the quickest 
and most desperate blows, and who, in the lan- 
guage of Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts, 
have been willing to recognize all men, even 
black men, as legally capable of that loyalty 
the blacks are waiting to manifest, and let 
them fight with God and nature on their side." 
The proclamation of General Fremont, giv- 
ing freedom to the slaves of rebels in Missouri 
has done more to make his name a household 



cowards may recoil from it, and seek to post- 
pone it ; but to resist it, unless Congress shall 
assume it, will be to wrestle with destiny. 

Mr. Speaker, I shall support the two meas- 
ures of confiscation and liberation now before 
us, for the same reason which led me to sup- 
port the confiscation bill of last July. They 
look in the right direction, and I am glad 
to see any advance step taken by Congress. 
But I shall retain, at any rate, my faith in 
the President, and in that logic of events 
which shows, amid all the seeming triumphs 
of slavery, that the anti-slavery idea has been 
steadily and surely marching towards its tri- 
umph. The victories of slavery, in fact, have 
been its defeats. It triumphed in the Missouri 
compromise of 1820; but that triimi]>h, by 
begetting new exactions, kindled and dif- 
fused an imslumbering anti-slavery senti- 
ment wiiich kept pace with every usurpation 
of its foe. It triumphed in the annexation of 
Texas ; but this, by paving the way for the 
Mexican war, more fully displayed its spirit 
of rapacity, and led to an organized political 
action against it which finally secured the 
control of the government. It triumphed in. 
1850, in the passage of the fugitive slave act, 
the Texas boundary bill, the overthrow of the 
Wilmot proviso, and the inauguration of the 
policy of popular sovereignty in our Territo- 
ries, which afterwards brought forth such 
bloody fruits in Kansas. But these measures, 
instead of glutting the demands of slavery, 
only whetted its appetite, and brought upon 
it the roused and intensified hostility of the 
people. It triumphed in the repeal of the 
Missouri restriction ; but this was, perhaps, 
the most signal defeat in the whole history 
of its career of aggression and lawlessness, 
completely unmasking its real character and 
designs, and appealing to both conservatives 
and radicals to combine against it. It tri- 
umphed again in the Dred Scott decision, 
and the election of James Buchanan as Presi- 
dent; but this only enabled slave-breeding 
Democracy to grow to its full stature, and 
bud and blossom into that perfect luxuriance 
of diabolism through which the Republican 
party mounted to power. Slavery triumphed, 
finally, when it clutched the national Treas- 
ury, sent our Navy into distant seas, plun- 
dered our arsenals, fired on our flag, and 
sought to make sure its dominion by whole- 
sale perjiiry, treason, rapine, and murder; 
but all this was onlv a c;raiul challenge to the 



word tlian could all the military glory of the ! nation to meet it in mortal combat, giving us 



war; and I rejoice that, while the President 
saw fit to revoke the recent sweeping order 
of General Hunter, he took pains to couple 
that revocation with words of earnest warn- 
ing, which have neither meaning nor appli- 
cation if they do not recognise the authority 
of the Executive, in his military discretion, 
to give freedom to the slaves. That this au- 
thority will be executed, at no very distant 
moment, I believe most firmly. The lan- 
guage of the President obviously implies it, 
and foreshadows it among the thick-coming 
events of the future. Conservatives and 



the right to choose any weapons recognised 
by the hiws of civilized warfare. Baffled and 
overborne in all its previous encounters, sla- 
very has now forced upon the nation the 
question of liberty or death; and I cannot 
doubt that the triumphs of freedom thus far 
will be crowned by final victorj' in this grand 
struggle. The cost of our victory, in treas- 
ure and blood, and the length of the struggle, 
will depend much upon the madness or the 
wisdom which may dictate our policy ; but I 
am sure that our country is not so far given 
over to the care of devils as to allow slavery 



to come out of this contest with its life. To 
believe this, would be to take sides with " the 
fool" who "hath said iu his heart there is no 
God." 

The triumph of anti-slavery is sure. In 
the day of its weakness, it faced proscription, 
persecution, violence, and death, but it never 
deserted its flag. It was opposed by public 
opinion, by the press, the religious organiza- 
tions of the country, and by great political 
parties, which it finally rent in twain and 
trampled under its feet. It is now the mas- 
ter of its own position, while its early heroes 
are taking their rank among the "noble of all 
ages." It has forced its way into the presi- 
dential chair, and rules in the Cabinet. It 
dictates the legislation of Congress, and speaks 
in the Courts of the Old "World. It goes 
forth with our armies, and is every hour more 
and more imbuing the soldiers of the Repub- 
lic with its spirit. Its course is onward, and 
while 

" The politic statesman looks back with a sigh, 
There is doubt in his heart, there is fear in his eye;" 

and even those slimy doughfaces and creep- 
ing things that still continue to hiss at "aboli- 
tionism," betray a tormenting apprehension 
that their day and generation are rapidly 
passing away. In the light of the past the 
future is made so plain that "he that runs 
may read." In the year 1850, when the slave 
power triumphed through the "final settle- 
ment" which was then attempted, I had the 
honor to hold a seat in this body ; and I said, 
in a speech then delivered, that — 

" The suppression of agitation in the non-slave hold- 
ing States will not and can not follow the ' pease meas- 
ures' recently adopted. The alleged death of the 
Wilmot proviso will only prove the death of those who 
have sought to kill it, while its advocates will be 
multiplied in every portion of the North. The cove- 
nant lor the admission of additional slave States will be 
repudiated, while a renewed and constantly increasing 
agitation will spring up in behalf of the doctrine of ' no 
more slave states.' Tho outrage of surrendering free 
soil to Texan slavery can not fail to be followed by the 
same results, and fust as naturally as fuel feeds the 
flame -which consumes it. The passage of the fugitive 
slave bill will open a. fresh wound in the North, and it 
will continue to bleed just as long as the law stands 
unrepealed. The existence of slavery iu the capitol of 
the Republic, upheld by the laws of Congress, must of 
itself keep alive an agitation whic'nwill be swelled with 
the continuance of the evil. Sir, these questions are no 
longer within the control of politicians. Party discipline, 
presidential nominations, and the spoils of office, can 
uot stifle the free utterance of the people respecting 
the great struggle now going on in thiscountry between 
the tree spirit of the North and a domineering oligarchy 
in the South. Hero, sir, lies the great question, and it 
must bo met. Neither acts of Congress nor the devices 
of partisans can postpone or evade it. It will have 
itself answered. 1 am aware that it involves the bread 
and butter of whole hosts of politicians ; and I do not 
marvel at their attempts to escape it, to smother it, to 
hide it from the eyes of the people, and to dam up the 
moral tide which is forcing it upon them. Neither do 
I marvel at their firing of guna and bacch.inalian liba- 
tions over ' the dead body of the Wilmot.' Such labors 
and rejoicings are by no means unnatural, but hey will 
befollowed by disappointment. It is vain to expect to 
qjiiet agitation by continued concessions to an institu- 



tion which is becoming every hour more and more a 

stigrna to the nation, and which, instead of seekine 
new conquests and new life, should be preparing itsell 
with grave clothes for a decent exit from the world ; 
concessions revolting to the humanity, the conscien- 
tious convictions, the religion, and the patriotism of the 
free States." 

Sir, I speak to-day in the spirit of these 
words uttered nearly twelve years ago, and 
verified by time. A small band of men in 
Congress braved public opinion, the ruling 
influences of the time, and every form of pro- 
scription, and intimidation, in standing by 
the cause which was overwhelmingly voted 
down. But although outvoted, it was not 
conquered. " It is in vain," says Carlylc, " to 
vote a false image true. Vote it, and re-vote 
it, by overwhelming majorities, by jubilant 
unanimities, the thing is not so ; it is otherwise 
than so, and all Adam's posterity, voting upon 
it till doomsday, cannot change it." 

The history of reform bears unfailing wit- 
ness to this truth. The cause which bore the 
cross in 1850, wears the crown to-day. "No 
power can die that ever wrought for truth." 
while the political graves of recreant states- 
men are eloquent with warnings against their 
mistakes. Where are those northern states- 
men v/ho betrayed liberty in 1820? They 
are already forgotten, or remembered only in 
their dishonor. Who now believes that any 
fresh laurels were won in 1850, by the great 
men who sought to gag the people of the free 
States, and lay the slab of silence on those 
truths which to-day write themselves down, 
along with the guilt of slaverj^, in the flames 
of civil war ? Has any man in the whole his- 
tory of American politics, however deeply 
rooted his reputation or god-like his gifts, 
been able to hold dalliance with slavery and 
live? I believe the spirit of liberty is the 
spirit of God, and if the giants of a past gen- 
eration were not strong enough to wrestle 
with it, can the pigmies of the present? It 
has been beautifully said of Wilberforce, that 
" he ascended to tho throne of God, with a 
million of broken shackles in his hands, as the 
evidence of a life well spent." History will 
take care of his memory ; and when our own 
bleeding country shall again put on the robes 
of peace, and freedom shall have leave to 
gather up her jewels, she will not search for 
them among the political fossils who are now 
seeking to si3are the rebels by pettifogging 
their cause in the name of the Constitution, 
while the slave power is feeling for the na- 
tion's throat. No ; God is not to be mocked. 
Justice is sure. The defenders of slavery 
and its despicable apologists will be nailed to 
the world's pillory, and the holiest shrines in 
the temple of American liberty will be re- 
served for those who shall most faithfully do 
battle against this rebellion, as a gigantic 
conspiracy against the rights of human nature 
and the brotherhood of our race. 



The Mebellion—tlie 3Iistal^es of the Past^-the Duty of the Present, 



sipeech: OIF 



Hon. GEOEGE W. JULIAN, 

In the house OF REPRESENTATIVES, February 18th, 18G3. 



The House having under consideration the 
bill to indemnify the President and other 
persons for suspending the privilege of the 
■writ of habeas corpus, and acts committed in 
pursuance thereof — 

Mr. Julian said : 

Mr. Speaker: The line of argument I 
■propose to pursue during the hour which 
belongs to me is general in its character, and 
■will not specially refer to the measure now 
pending before the House. It will not, how- 
ever, be found substantially irrelevant to the 
Bubject ; and as I have already waited several 
•weeks for the floor, and the widest latitude 
has thus far been allowed in this debate, I 
trust I shall be permitted to proceed without 
encountering any very strict construction of 
the rules of order provided for the government 
of this body. 

In seeking to interpret the terrible conflict 
through which our countrj' is passing, and to 
devise, if possible, a just and wise policy for 
the Government in its future action, the mind 
naturally reverts to the past There is a 
gense in which it is well to let bj'-gones be 
by-goncs, but we can never afford to dispense 
with the lessons of experience. 'Ry an eternal 
law, as unvarying in politics as in morals, to- 
day is made the child of yesterday and the 
parent of to-mori-ow — the past and the present 
linked together in the relation of cause and 
eiFect, and irrevocably woven into the future. 
It is true philosophy, therefore, to proflt by 
our mistakes, to the extent of shunning their 
repetition, while causing the past to reappear 
■where its deeds have been worthy. 

The triUmph of the Republican party in 
1860 was the triumph of freedom over slavery. 
I do not say that ail who supported Abraham 
Lincoln were abolitionists, or even anti-slavery 
men, or that all who opposed him were the 
advocates of slavery. This would be very far 
from the exact truth. "What I afllrm is, that 
hostility to slavery was the animating senti- 
ment of the men whose deeply-rooted con- 
victions and unquenchable zeal made the 
formation of the Republican party a necessity, 
and nerved it with all its real strength ; while, 
on the other hand, the espousal of slavery 
was the grand and darling purpose of those 
whose shaping hand and inspiring ambition 
gave life and law to the Democratic organi- 
zation. 



I go further still. The contest of 1860 was 
not simply a struggle between slavery arvd 
freedom, but a struggle of life and death. 
Slavery, as a system of unskilled labor, de- 
'>na7ids the right of unrestricted extension 
over fresh soil as a condition of its life. This 
is a law of its nature, attested by the Seminole 
and Florida war, the seizure of Texas, the 
war with Mexico, the repeal of the Missouri 
restriction, the raid into Kansas, and by its 
entire history in this country. Contine it by 
impassable boundaries, and it will turn upon 
and devour its own life, and destroy both 
master and slave. Slaveholders understand 
this perfectly, and I do not marvel that their 
hostility was not assuaged in the smallest 
degree by the Republican dogma of nc>n- 
interference with it in the States. They knew 
that the exclusion of it from all Federal ter- 
ritory would not only put the nation's brand 
upon it in the States which it scourges, and 
condemn it as a public enemy, but virtually 
sentence it to death. They believed, Avith our 
Republican fathers, that restriction means 
destruction. They knew that as the first dose 
of medicine given to a sick man forms a part 
of the whole process of cure, so the policy of 
limitation, as an incipient remedy for our 
great national malady, would be followed by 
other measures, moral, economical, and politi- 
cal, which would ultimately but surely expel 
it from the country. Hence they fought Re- 
piublicanism with all the zeal and desperation 
which could be inspired by a great social and 
moneyed power, threatened with suflbcation 
and death. They were simply obeying the 
law of self-preservation ; and I think it due 
to frankness to confess that the charge of 
"abolitionism,'' which they incessantly hurled 
at the Republican party, was by no means 
totally wanting in essential truth. When 
they were vanquished in the election of Mr. 
Lincoln, their appeal from the ballot to the 
bullet, was the logical consequence of their 
insane devotion to slavery, and their convic- 
tion that nothing could save it but the ruin of 
the Republic. 

Such was the issue decided by the people in 
the last Presidential canvass. It was the long- 
postponed battle between slavery and anti- 
slavery, fairly encountering each other at the 
ballot-box. It was a struggle between two 
intensely hostile ideas, wrestling for the final 
naastery of tlie Republic. Freedom, through 



11 



the Republican party as its instrument, 
triumphed over slavery, with both wings of 
the Democratic party as its servants and 
tools ; for the distinction between Breckin- 
ridge Democracy and Douglas Democracy 
was purely metaphysical, and eluded, entirely, 
the plain common sense of honest men. 

Now, sir, I hold that the people of the 
United States, who earned and fairly achieved 
this great victory, had a vested right to its 
fruits. They had a right to expect the domi- 
nation of slavery over the national Govern- 
ment to cease. They had a right to demand 
that all its departments should be committed 
to the hands of those who believe in the grand 
idea on which the Administration ascended 
to power. And the intervention of the rebel- 
lion in no degree whatever released the Go- 
vernment from its duty in this respect. The 
rebellion did not refute, but confirmed, the 
truth of Republicanism. It was simply a 
final chapter in the history of the slave 
power, an advanced stage of slaveholding 
rapacity, naturally born of Democratic mis- 
rule ; and instead of tempting us to cower 
before it and surrender our principles, fur- 
nished an overwhelming argument in favor 
of standing by them to the death. 

I do not say that no man who had been 
identified with the Democratic party should 
have been appointed to office, but that no 
man who regarded with indifference the great 
principle which had triumphed in the can- 
vass ; no man, certainly, who was known to 
be hostile to that principle, should have been 
allowed to hold any Federal office, high or 
low, civil or military, at home or abroad. 
This was the duty of the Administration; for 
the simple reason that it could not decline it 
with fidelity to the pieople who had installed 
it in power. The Republican pirinciple was 
as true after the election as during the can- 
vass ; as true in the midst of war as in seasons 
of peace ; and just so far as we have lost sight 
of this truth, just so far have we strayed from 
the path of safety. Indeed, instead of putting 
our principles in abeyance when the storm of 
war came, we should have clung to them with 
a redoubled energy and a dedicated zeal. In- 
stead of making terms with our vanquished 
opponents by conferring upon them office and 
power, we should have taught them that these 
were necessarily forfeited in our triumph. 
And we should have remenibered that even 
our enemies would brand us as hypocrites 
and cowards, if the Administration should be 
less distinctively Republican in principle and 
policy than had been the party which created 
It. 

Yery nearly allied to the policy of conciliat- 
ing our opponents, and thus building up their 
power, was the project of a Union party, en- 
couraged by Republican politicians simultane- 
ously with the beginning of this Administra- 
tion. Such a movement, started soon after a 
heated political canvass involving the issue of 
slavery and anti-slavery, was utterly pre- 
posterous. The war grew out of the very 
question which had organized our parties 



and marshalled them against each other in 
time of peace; and hence, instead of melting 
and fusing them into one, their lines of divi- 
sion would be brought out all the more 
palpably, and their antagonisms all the more 
intensified. It was incredible that pro-slavery 
Democracy, after having been so thoroughly 
drugged and surfeited with the heresies of 
southern rebels, should, in the twinkling of 
an eye, enter into cordial union with the men 
it had so long traduced. What is now paljv 
able to all men, I thought obvious in the 
beginning: that a union of Republicans and 
Democrats, on the single question of putting 
down the rebellion, ignoring the real issue 
out of which it sprang, was simply a shallow 
expedient for dividing the spoils of office, at 
the cost of a practical surrender of the prin- 
ciples for which Republicans had so zealously 
contended. I do not say that the disruption 
of the Democratic party was by any means 
impossible. There was a vigorous loyal 
element pervading its rank and file, which 
its unprincipled Icadershipi would have been 
powerless to control, if Republicans had stood 
firm. If we had been perfectly true to our 
own principles, bating no jot of zeal in their 
maintenance, and frowning upon any move- 
ment which sought to soften down or shade ofiT 
the right-angled character of our anti-slavery 
policy ; if we had bravely accepted the conse- 
quences of that policy, branding the rebellion 
as the child of slavery, and the Democratic 
party as the great nursing mother that had 
fed and pampered it into this bloody revolt 
against the Constitution; if, when the truth 
of our doctrines and the guilt of our opponents 
were written down in the fires of civil war, 
we had called upon all men to join hands with 
us in saving the country, the Democratic 
party would have heard its death knell in the 
guns of Fort Sumter, and instead of borrow- 
ing new life from the cowardice and decline 
of Republicanism, would have crawled to its 
guilty and dishonored grave. Only by per- 
sistent fidelity to our own principles could we 
hope either to break down the power of our 
foes or maintain a real Union movement. 
This we already had in the Republican party. 
If there is anywhere a Republican who is not 
a Union man I would be glad to know where 
he may be found. This accursed war is upon 
us to-day because the policy of the Govern- 
ment, under the rule of slave-breeding Demo- 
cracy, has so long been drifting from the 
principles of our Republican fathers, as re- 
affirmed in the Philadelphia and Chicago 
platforms. The rebellion is a fulfilled prophecy 
of Thomas Jefferson, and of all the leading 
anti-slavery men of a later generation ; and 
nothing, certainly, should have been further 
from our purpose than to rush with indecent 
haste into the embrace of unrepentant Demo- 
crats, when the very life of the nation hud 
been brought into deadly peril by their syste- 
matic recreancy to the principles of real De- 
mocracy. 

Sir, Democratic policy not only gave birth 
to the rebellion, but Democrats, and only 



12 



Democrats, are in arms against their country. 
Democruts fired on its flag at Fort Sumter. 
Jefferson Davis is a Democrat, and so is every 
God-forsaken rebel at his heels. A Demo- 
cratic Administration was in power when the 
rebellion first lifted its head. A Democratic 
President, who could have nipped it in the 
bud, allowed our Navy to he sent to distant 
seas, our fortresses to be occupied, our arsenals 
and navy-yards to be seized, and our arms 
and munitions to be stolen. Democrats 
clutched the Treasury of the Government 
and robbed it of its Indian bonds. The dis- 
tinguished thieves and cut-throats who are 
known as the leaders of the rebellion, such as 
Floyd, Thompson, Yancey,' and Cobb, are all 
Democrats. Not only is it true that rebels 
are Democrats, but so are rebel sympathizers, 
whether in the North or the South. On the 
other hand, the Kepublican party, so far as 
I can learn, has not furnished a single recruit 
to the ranks of the rebellion. Loyalty and 
republicanism go hand in hand throughout 
the Union, as perfectly as treason and 
slavery. 

In the light of these pregnant facts, Mr. 
Chairman, we find no occasion for a new 
party. What we should work and pray for 
is the success of our principles, and this can 
only be secured by steadfastness of purpose 
and associated political action. We need 
something of permanence in our movements, 
shunning that fickleness and instability that 
would form a new party, with a new name, 
for every campaign, and thus fritter away 
our strength in the fickleness of our schemes, 
instead of husbanding it for effective service. 
Kepublicanism is not like a garment, to be put 
on or laid aside for our own convenience, but 
an enduring principle, which can never be 
abandoned without faithlessness to the country. 
It is not a succession of "dissolving views," 
brought on to the political stage to amuse 
conservative gentlemen, or to dazzle and be- 
wilder the people, but the fixed star which 
should guide us through the shifting phases 
of American polities and the bloody labyrinths 
of war. Sir, not even to save the Union, or 
to restore the blessings of peace, should we 
forsake its light. It is because we loved our 
principles more than peace that we are now 
in the midst of war. We demanded a Union 
under conditions that would make it the 
servant of liberty, and not the handmaid of 
slavery, and the rebellion is the result. Let 
us accept it; and when we are charged with 
producing.it, let us reply that the charge, if 
true at all, is true in a sense which makes in- 
famous the men who prefer it. In the sense 
in which the opponents of paganism caused 
martyrdoms in the early days of tlie Church ; 
in the sense in which the enemies of the papal 
power in the time of Luther caused persecu- 
tions and death ; in the sense in which Thomas 
Jefferson and the fiithers caused the war of 
our Kcvolution, we, who are called llepubli- 
cans, caused the rebellion, of which pro-slavery 
Democracy is pre-eminently guilty. If wo 
had allowed slavery to take root in the soil of 



Kansas, without resistance or protest ; if we 
had permitted it, through the help of the 
Supreme Court, to fasten its fangs upon 
all our Territories, so that neither Congress, 
nor the people, nor any human power could 
remove it; if we had allowed it to go freely 
into the non-slavcholding States, and set up 
its habitation in defiance of State enactments; 
if we had consented to the revival of the 
African slave trade, and that our lips should 
be sealed against the right to talk about it, 
except to talk in its favor; if, in a word, the 
people of the free States had been willing to 
trample unde# their feet the institutions of 
their fathers, and to dedicate this continent 
to slaveholding and slave-breeding forever, 
then we might have peace to-day, and an 
unbroken Union. But our Democratic peace 
would have been the peace of the pit "stifling, 
suflocating, sultry" — a peace infinitely more 
dreadful than the war we have chosen to 
accept in the maintenance of our principles; 
and our Union would have been a confeder- 
acy of corsairs, devouring humanity, defying 
God, exalting the devil, and gladdening the 
heart of every absolutist and tyrant through- 
out the earth. Sir, I rejoice greatly that 
Eepublicans had the courage to tlirow them- 
selves between their country and the eternal 
damnation to which Democratic policy was 
about to consign it; and that now, standing 
face to face with the dread realities of war, 
they are still resolved to stand together by the 
flagstaft' of freedom. No step backwards is 
possible, nor was there any hope for the Re- 
public so long as the Government and its ad- 
visers failed to realize this fact. 

Mr. Chairman, I have indicated, in general 
terms, the mistakes of Republican policy since 
the beginning of the war. Many of our 
trusted leaders have lost their way, while the 
Administration itself has not been thoroughly 
Republican in its policy. Forgetting the 
mere negations of our creed, it should have 
planted itself bravely on its affirmations, 
pausing not a moment to apologize, or depre- 
cate, or explain. The crisis called for absolute 
courage, and the time had gone by forever for 
any policy savoring, in the smallest degree, of 
timidity or hesitation. The disasters of this 
war, and the perils which now threaten the 
country, find their best explanation in the 
failure of the Government to stand by its 
friends, and its readiness to strengthen the 
hands of its foes. To a fearful extent Demo- 
cratic ideas and Democratic policy have ruled 
this Republican Administration from the be- 
ginning. Democratic piolicy, very soon after 
the war began, speaking through our Repub- 
lican Secretary of State, declared that " the 
Federal Government could not reduce the 
seceding States to obedience by conquest," 
and that "only an imperial or dcsjiotic Go- 
vernment could subjugate thorouglily disaf- 
fected and insurrectionary members of the 
State;" persuaded the nations of the earth 
that our struggle was not an "irrepressible 
conflict" between two forms of society, each 
of which was aiming at absolute dominion 



13 



over the country, but a mere domestic tumult 
which would subside in "sixty days," and 
that the institution of slavery, which the 
whole world now confesses to have been the 
cause of the war, would not be affected by it, 
but "remain subject to exactly the same laws 
and forms of administration, whether the re- 
volution shall succeed or whether it shall 
fail." Democratic policy, pouring its cow- 
ardly counsels into the ear of the commander- 
in-chief of our armies, tempted him to write a 
letter to Secretary Sewai-d, on the day before 
Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, in which he 
scouted the idea of subduing the rebel States 
by military power, fovored the organization 
of a Union party and the abandonment of 
Kepublicanism, and recommended a pacifica- 
tion on the godless basis of the Crittenden re- 
solves of January, 1861 ; or that we should say 
to our "wayward sisters, go in peace." De- 
mocratic policy made Gen. McClellan com- 
mander-in-chief, by falsely claiming for him 
the victories of our arms in "Western Virginia, 
achieved by Rosecrans, Morris, and Benham, 
and by the indorsement of General Scott, who, 
as the country has since learned, did not 
believe in the war which the Government 
had inaugurated. Democratic policy, through 
General Patterson as its representative, de- 
tained a large army in the valley of Winches- 
ter, which should have marched against 
General Johnston and his inferior force, in- 
stead of allowing him to join Beauregard at 
Bull Run, thus securing the defeat and rout 
of our army, instead of decisive victory, which, 
else, would have crowned our arms. Demo- 
cratic policy, through the authority of General 
McClellan, kept the Potomac blockaded during 
the fall and winter of 1861 and 1862; and 
when the Navy Department insisted, as it 
did repeatedly, on putting an end to the 
blockade, which it could have done at any 
moment, our Democratic general objected 
that "it would bring on a general engage- 
ment;" and thus was the honor of the nation 
compromised, and millions sacrificed through 
its interrupted commerce, without cause or 
excuse. Democratic policy, personified by 
General McClellan and General Stone, sent 
Colonel Baker and his gallant men across the 
Potom.ac against a superior force, with one 
scow and two small boats as the only means 
of transportation; and after the crossing had 
commenced, twenty-four thousand men under 
General Smith and General McCall, who 
were within striking distance, and expected 
by Colonel Baker to join him, were ordered 
to retreat by General McClellan ; while fifteen 
hundred of our men at Edward's Ferry, onljr 
three and a half miles from the battle field, 
who could have reinforced Colonel Baker 
and turned the fortunes of the day, were 
compelled to stand idle while the gallant 
hero and his men were butchered without 
mercy. During the autumn and winter 
months which followed. Democratic policy 
made the grand army of the Potomac squat 
before the wooden guns of Centreville and 
Manassas ; and although our forces were 



many times larger than those of the rebels, 
and our men in fine health and discipline, 
and eager to fight, while during these succes- 
sive months we were favored with solid roads 
and clear frosty days and nights, yet neither 
the persuasions of the President nor the 
clamors of the people could induce General 
McClellan to move; nor did any member of 
the Cabinet, nor the President himself, nor 
any general in his army, know his plans, or 
why our forces did not advance. Democratic 
policy, refusing to allow our armies to go into 
winter quarters or to march upon the enemy, 
kept them strictly on the defensive through- 
out the Union, till the President in the latter 
part of January of last year gave the order 
forward, resulting in the victories of Fort 
Henry, Fort Donelson, and Newbern, which 
so electrified the country. The army of the 
Potomac was required to march on the 22d of 
February, but Democratic policy held it in- 
active till the 10th of March, when General 
McClellan, in obedience to a peremptory 
order of the President, took up the line of 
march toward Centreville, after having first 
learned that the rebels had retired toward the 
Rappahannock. This pink and beau-ideal of 
Democratic policy, instead of pushing at once 
towards Richmond, which he could have 
done by railroad by way of Aquia Creek and 
Fredericksburg, or by the Manassas and 
Gordonsville road, marched his army back to 
Alexandria, where hundreds perished or re- 
ceived the cause of their death, in the open 
fields and woods in sight of their tents, during 
the cold, drenching rains, to which they were 
exposed for many days prior to their embarka- 
tion for Fortress Monroe. Democratic policy, 
still ruling the country through General Mc- 
Clellan, planned the ill-fated campaign on 
the Peninsula ; and although he had insisted, 
while himself near the capital, that the whole 
armj^ of the Potomac was necessary for its 
defence, yet on leaving, under positive orders 
that this city should be amply defended, he 
seems to have considered fifteen thousand raw 
and undisciplined troops, the refuse of the 
army, sufficient for its protection; all of the 
army in and around Washington, except this 
meagie force, having been ordered by him to 
proceed at once to the Peninsula. Democratic 
policy compelled the army of the Potomac to 
sit down before Yorktown till a small army 
had grown to be a large one, and then per- 
mitted it to evacuate at its leisure. General 
Hooker, with his advance force, followed ; 
but Democratic policy, refusing him to be 
reinforced, held thirty thousand men within 
sound of the battle, by which our forces were 
repulsed and the escape of the enemy secured. 
When our army at length reached the Chicka- 
hominy. Democratic policy founded the king- 
dom of pickaxes and spades, and sent thou- 
sands of our soldiers to their graves, because 
the employment of able-bodied negroes in 
ditching would bo offensive to Democratic 
gentility, and might endanger "the Union 
as it was." When Gpn. McClellan, by order 
of Gen, Hallcck, left the James river, and 



14 



reached Alexandria in time to save General 
Pope at the second battle of Bull Eun ; De- 
mocratic policy, forgetting the country, al- 
lowed him to be sacrificed. Democratic 
policy, sifting its deadly poison into the 
mind of the President, again placed General 
McClellan in command of the army of the 
Potomac, and reinstated, at his request, the 
generals whose failures had caused Pope's 
defeat; and the "strategy" which followed 
left the way open for the withdrawal of Gen. 
Lee, and delayed the march of our forces till 
Harper's Ferry had fallen into the hands of 
the enemy. Democratic policy, at the battle 
of Antietam, kept at least forty thousand of 
our men in reserve, and thus converted a 
magniflcent victory, most temptingly brought 
within our grasp, into at best a drawn battle. 
Democratic policy, which cost us more than 
fifty thousand soldiers on the Peninsula, 
systematically misled the public by compel- 
ling the newspaper correspondents within 
our lines to suppress facts and utter falsehoods, 
in order to glorify General McClellan, shield 
him from popular disapprobation, and per- 
petuate his command. Democratic policy at 
this moment clamoi'S for his restoration, and 
every man who blames the Kepublicans for 
bringing on this war, and who declares, as 
Gen. McClellan did at its beginning, that the 
South is right; every man who believes in 
wearing out the patience of the country 
by military failures, so that the rebels may 
be restored to power through some infernal 
compromise; every man who despises the 
policy which woufd win victories, or follow 
them up when won ; every man who was as 
much of a traitor as he had the courage to be 
in the beginning of this struggle, andhas all 
the time wished the rebels "a hearty God- 
speed; every man who has done his "be.it to 
discourage enlistments, embarrass the action 
of the Government, and render the Avar odious 
to the people ; every man who raises the cry 
of peace, and talks about new guarantees to 
pacifj' the felons who have sought the nation's 
life; every man who loves negro slavery better 
than he loves his country, and would sooner 
see the Eepublic in ruins than the slaves set 
free, is the zealous advocate and unflinching 
champion of General McClellan. 

Mr. Chairman, Democratic policy proves 
itself the ally of treason by hugging the 
cause w..ich produces it. It clings to slavery 
as a dyi-ig man clings to life. It condemns 
its prohibition in our Territories, and its 
abolition in this District. In the midst of a 
terrific struggle of the nation for self-preserva- 
tion, requiring the use of all the weapons 
known to the laws of war, it demands the 
repeal of our confiscation laws, and denounces 
the President's proclamation giving freedom 
to the slaves of rebels. With equal zeal it 
opposes the gradual "abolishment of slavery," 
with the consent of loyal masters, and com- 
pensation allowed them. Democratic policy 
clamors for peace with rebels in arms, on the 
basis of the Crittenden compromise, rejected 
by them two years ago, and which, if accept- 



ed, would completely surrender the libertie' 
of the people to the slaveholding vandals of 
the South, Democratic policy has played 
into the hands of rebels by refusing the help 
of negroes into our armies, as laborers, team- 
sters, cooks, nurses, scouts, and soldiers, thus 
necessarily weakening our military power, 
and sacrificing the lives of our men. Demo- 
cratic policy has sought the oflfice of slave- 
hound for rebels ever since the beginning of 
the war, and is still, occasionally, exercising 
its functions in defiance of positive prohibi- 
tions. Democratic piolicy, taking the form of 
"Order ISIo. ,3." under which, for more than a 
year, loyal colored men were driven from our 
camps, and their proffered aid and informa- 
tion rejected, earned the gratitude of every 
rebel throughout the Union, and the curses 
of every loyal man. Democratic policy de- 
spises an abolitionist far more heartily than 
a traitor ; the term abolitionist, according to 
a leading Democratic organ, signifying "any 
man who does not love slavery for its own 
sake, as a divine institution ; who does not 
worship it as the corner-stone of civil liberty; 
who does not adore it as the only possible 
social condition on which a permanent re- 
publican government can be erected; and who 
does not, in his inmost soul, desire to see it ex- 
tended and perpetuated over the whole earth, 
as a means of human reformation, second in 
dignity, importance, and sacredness, to the 
religion of Christ." Democratic policy, by 
thus perpetually deferring to slavery as a 
sacred thing, and to slaveholders as a superior 
order of men, has smothered that feeling of 
resentment in our armies which else would 
have been evoked, and the lack of which, 
according to our commanders, is one of the 
serious obstacles to our success. Democratic 
policy in the year 1861 gave us as command- 
ers of our three great military departments, 
McClellan, Halleck, and Buell, whose military 
administrations have so terribly cursed the 
country; while it imposed upon our volunteer 
forces in the field, such officers as Fitz John 
Porter, General Nelson, General Stone, and 
very many more whose sympathies with the 
rebels were well known throughout the 
country. 

Mr. Wadsworth. I desire to make an in- 
quiry of the gentleman. I thought I under- 
stood him to say that General Nelson's 
sympathy with the rebels was well known-. 
I wish to know if he alludes to General "VVm. 
Nelson, deceased. 

Mr. Julian. I allude to that gentleman. 

Mr. "Wadsworth. T was born and reared 
with him, served witli him in the intimate 
relations against the rebels, and knew him 
from his j-outh up to (he time of his death ; 
and I say that there was not a more deter- 
mined opponent of the rebels and of secession 
in America. The language of the gentleman 
is untrue. The stain attempted to be cast 
upon the memory of (ieneral Nelson is unde- 
served and unfounded. Such language as 
that is outrageous. I have heard the speech, 
entirely out of order upon this bill, with 



15 



patience, but I cannot allow the memory of 
Wm. Nelson to be slandered in this way. 

Mr. Julian. In reply to the remarks of 
the gentleman from Kentucky, (Mr. Wads- 
WOETH,) I have only to say that what I said 
is true. I did not say that General Nelson 
was a rebel. I said he was well understood 
to be in sympathy with the rebels, and this 
understanding, so far as I have any means of 
knowledge, is universal among the soldiers 
of Indiana and Ohio who have served under 
him in the field in Kentucky and elsewhere. 
While I do not say that he was a rebel, I say 
that, like some other distinguished gentlemen 
from Kentucky, he was a rebel sympathizer, 
loving slavery more than he loved his 
country. That I desire to say in the most 
emphatic words I know how to employ. 

The gentleman from Kentucky did not 
charge me with an intentional misrepresenta- 
tion, as I understood him. If he makes that 
charge I shall deal with it. I understand we 
simply differ as a matter of fact. 

Mr. Wadsworth. I did not intend to 
charge the gentleman with any intentional 
misrepresentation touching the sentiments of 
General Nelson, unless he makes himself 
responsible for it. I did not know but that 
he was making a statement, in which he con- 
fided, derived from others. My purpose was 
to denounce the statement which the gentle- 
man brings in here. I do not care who makes 
the statement, he is a slanderer of the gallant 
dead. 

Mr. Julian. I decline to yield to the gen- 
tleman farther. The gentleman denounces 
my assertion — 

Mr. "Wadsworth. I denounce it as a 
slander. 

Mr. Julian. And I denounce the gentle- 
man's denunciation, and his defence of a rebel 
sympathizer. 

Mr. Speaker, Democratic policy, speaking 
through officers high in command in the 
army of the Potomac, now more than a year 
ago, threatened to march upon the capital and 
disperse Congress as Cromwell did the Par- 
liament, because a joint committee of both 
Houses of Congress was inquiring into the 
conduct of the war. Democratic policy, when 
General Fremont proclaimed freedom to the 
slaves of rebels in Missouri, inundated the 
Executive Mansion with falsehoods, which 
had their coining in pro-slavery malice and 
disappointed ambition ; and a Kepublican 
President, yielding to a torrent which he 
thought resistless, removed him from his 
command; and although the policy of this 
proclamation has since been accepted by the 
Government, and the charges on which he 
was hounded down are known to be false, yet 
Democratic policy still deprives the country 
of his service, because he is a Kepublican, 
and an unbeliever in the supreme divinity 
of slavery. Democratic policy holds in its 
hands all the great machinery of this war, 
and directs it according to his own will. Our 
present commander-in-chief is a Democrat, 
whose future management of the war, if we 



are to judge from his past career, promises 
nothing for the country. Of the major and 
brigadier generals in our armies. Democratic 
policy has favored this Kepublican Adminis- 
tration, if I am not mistaken, with over 
four-fifths — certainly an overwhelming ma- 
jority ; while those great hives of military 
patronage, the Adjutant General's Depart- 
ment, the Quartermaster's Department, the 
Commissary Department, the Ordnance De- 
partment, and the Pay Department, are all 
under Democratic control, and have been 
during the war. Several of the heads of 
these departments held their positions under 
James Buchanan ; while Democratic policy 
likewise controls the chief bureaus in the 
Navy Department. Democratic policy has 
not only studiously thrown into the back- 
ground Kepublican generals, whose hearts are 
in the war, and put in the lead political 
generals of its own type, but has pursued the 
same policy toward Democratic generals who 
have evinced a change of views on the ques- 
tion of slavery. Mitchell and Hunter are 
cases in point, while Curtis is almost the 
only Republican general who has been al- 
lowed to hold an independent command in a 
war ill which, according to the best attain- 
able data, more than three-fourths of the 
soldiers of the Union are Republicans. To 
an alarming extent Democratic policy has 
ruled in the Post Office, War, Treasury, and 
Interior Departments, in which, after very 
many long-delayed but greatly needed re- 
movals, effected chiefly through Congres- 
sional intervention, there are still hundreds 
of Democratic clerks, of whom many are 
known to be rebels in heart, and some of them 
the appointees and pets of Davis, Floyd, and 
Thompson. What is equally remarkable, is 
the fact that the higher and more lucrative 
grades of these positions are nearly all given 
to Democrats ; while Democratic policy, ad- 
hering to its ancient custom, under this Re- 
publican Administration, bestows upon tha 
District of Columbia, and such States as 
Maryland and Virginia, a share of these 
places in monstrous disproportion to that of 
the free States of the North and West. I 
can not go further into details ; but the fruits 
of this Democratic policy are seen in great 
military disasters ; in the wasted energies 
and fading hopes of the people ; in reaction- 
ary movements in the free States ; in threat- 
ened intervention from abroad, and in im- 
pending national ruin ; and without a speedy 
change in our policy, no power but that of 
God, through miraculous intervention, can 
save our country. 

Mr. Chairman, the time has come when 
every true man in the Union should demand, 
in the name of the country, that Democratic 
policy shall rule it no longer. When the 
nation is grasping for breath because the 
honored leaders of Republicanism have been 
infidel to its principles, plainness of speech is 
a duty, and silence a crime. As a freeman, 
and the Representative of freemen, it is at 
once my right and my duty to utter what I 



16 



believe to be vital truth. I deeply regret the 
necessity which impels me to criticise the 
policy of the Administration. I honor the 
President as the chief magistrate of the Ec- 
public, and love him as a man. I have 
received at his hands nothing hut personal 
kindness and political respect. 1 stand ready 
to make any earthly sacritice to sustain him 
in this direful conflict with the rebel power of 
the country, North and South. "Faithful 
are the reproofs of a friend," and it is as his 
friend, seeking to rescue the land from poli- 
tical perdition, and not as a disguised rebel, 
seeking to undermine his Administration, 
that I speak. I tell him that his policy of 
conciliating Democrats has been as ruinous 
to our cause as the kindred policy of con- 
caliating rebels. Instead of winning them to 
our side, blotting out the lines of party, and 
inaugurating an "era of good feeling," it has 
breathed fresh life and vigor into the Demo- 
cratic organization, which now everywhere 
confronts us as a powerful and consolidated 
opposition, while our own party is disbanded 
and powerless. Sir, had the policy of the 
Government been boldly Eepublican, making 
good to ■ the people their victory over the 
cohorts of slavery in 1860, every northern 
State would to-day have been wheeled into 
line on the side of the Administration, and 
the Democratic party would have been linger- 
ing on its death-bed. The war itself, I firmly 
believe, would have been ended, and with far 
less sacrifice of treasure and blood than we 
have already incurred. 1 speak respectfully, 
but earnestly, when I say the President must 
stand by his friends, if he expects his friends 
to stand by him. He must point the door to 
ervery pampered pro-slavery rat in any of his 
public cribs, and bestow the offices and honors 
at his disposal upon those who believe in the 
Republican idea. He should institute, as 
speedily as possible, a general casting out of 
devils from the various Departments of the 
Government, and fill their places with men 
who believe in God, and who have not out- 
lived their consciences in serving as the 
shameless scullions of the slave power. By 
all means, and at the earliest moment, should 
he insist upon a lustration of the military 
Department, to purify it from the deadly con- 
tamination of treason. This is a slaveholders' 
rebellion. The rebellion, in fact, is " slavery 
in arms," and therefore no man who believes 
in slavery is fit for any high commiind. The 
war is not a war of sections, but of ideas; and 
we need and must have military leaders who 
will conduct it in the light of this truth. To 
the want of such leaders must be attributed 
the delays and disasters of the struggle thus 
far. General Sigel says : 

"It is an enormous crime to expose our devoted 
Boldicrs to the fury of a uiiit-i'd, dotermiiiod, and vigor- 
ous enemy, on account of any heeitnncy to use the 
right means at the riglit time, or b;/ plneinri men in hirjh 
arid responsible positions wlio, on account of their former 
as ociations and p edges, can never be. trusted bs sin- 
cere friends of the Kepuhlic, nor expected to strike a 
fatal blow at treasou and rebellion." 

Sir, we must have commanders who will 
fight, not simply as the stipendiaries of the 



Government, but as men whose whole hearts 
are in the work, and who believe, religiously, 
in the rights of man. 

" It is the heart, and not the brain, 
That to the highest doth attain." 

I believe you may search the history of the 
world in vain for such armies as we now have 
in the field. Their heroism upon every battle- 
field, often under incompetent commanders, 
and always under the most appalling dis- 
advantages, must be the theme of everlasting 
praise. They have seemed to understand this 
quarrel from the beginning. They have 
fought as only men could fight who counted 
their lives as nothing in comparison with the 
life of the Kepublic, and the imperiled cause 
of libertj' on earth. The battle of Fredericks- 
burg, where thousands marched into the jaws 
of certain death without the wavering of a 
hair, affords but a single example of the spirit 
which has so ungrudgingly offered up so many 
heroic lives during the war. Sir, I honor our 
patriot soldiers as I honor no man, titled or 
untitled, who walks the earth. Their example, 
looming above the general profligacy and 
faithlessness of mere politicians, has already 
made humanity sublime, and anchored the 
final triumph of our cause to the very throne 
of the Eternal. In their name do I speak 
when I plead that they shall be allowed to 
fight our battles under competent and worthy 
leaders, whose souls are on fire with a quench- 
less zeal for our cause. In our war with 
Mexico, as I am advised, no man was allowed 
to hold the oflSce of major general of volun- 
teers, or brigadier general, who was not a 
member of the Democratic party. I believe 
this policy was extensively carried out also as 
to the subordinate places in our Army, at 
least nine-tenths of which were conferred 
upon the party in power. General Scott and 
General Taylor were Whigs, but they held 
their positions before the war, and during its 
progress had to encounter a fierce and formid- 
able opposition from the Administration and 
its friends. I am not finding fault with this 
policy, which I refer to as simply sliowing 
that the Government, at that time, dispensed 
its fiivors among its friends, and intrusted the 
command of our armies to men who believed in 
the war. This the Government .should do to- 
day. This is a war of freedom and free 
labor against a mighty aristocracy based upon 
the ownership of men. Our aim is the over- 
throw of that power, and the reorganization 
of southern society on a republican basis; and 
it should require no argument to prove that 
men who believe in tliis aristocracy are. not 
the most fit commanders in such a contest. 
On this subject history is not wanting in les- 
sons to guide us. As early as the year 1388 
the cities of Germany, which had formed 
four leagues in self-defence against the aris- 
tocracy that lived only by its plunder of 
commerce, were engaged in deadlj' conflict 
for their rights. They made two mistakes, 
which paved the way for their ruin. They 
lost the symyathy of the peasantry, because 
they fought only for the privileges of the 



17 



cities; and tliey appointed nobles to command 
tlieir armies wlio cared more for their pro- 
perty in the cities than for the rights of the 
people. These nobles counselled " modera- 
tion," and one of them proved a traitor on the 
field of battle. Afterwards, city after city 
fell into the hands of the aristocracy, and the 
people became the prey of a swarm of petty 
monarchs, who annihilated the external 
power of the country, which groans under 
their oppression to this day. The same 
principle was illustrated in our revolutionary 
war by the State of South Carolina, which 
S'.varmed with royalists and tories, who, like 
the rebels now in arms against us, loved 
slavery more than they loved their country. 
It is not possible to put down one privileged^ 
class through the leadership of another, un- 
less their interests are antagonistical. 

Jlr. Chairman, the fatal consequence of 
losing sight of the principle I am now urging 
has been seen in the recall of General Fre- 
mont from his command of the Western 
department. In the year 1856, his name had 
been conspicuously identified with the great 
political conflict which finally culminated in 
a conflict of arms. He was -known to the 
country less as a politician than as a jiatriot, 
and a man of genius and dauntless courage; 
and th re was a romance about his life and 
name which kindled the popular enthusiasm 
in his behalf to a very remarkable degree. 
He entered upon his command at the end of 
July with less than twenty-five thousand 
effective men, poorly armed and equipped ; 
and of these ten thousand were three months' 
men, whose time expired in ten days from 
his arrival. At the end of October he held 
sixtj'' thousand square miles of the enemy's 
country, and had succeeded in organizing 
and equipping an army v/hich was every- 
where successful along the whole extent of 
liis lines. He had restored quiet and compa- 
rative peace to the State of Missouri, while 
the enemy was in full retreat before him. 
Believing the revolutionary measures of the 
rebels could only be put down by revolution- 
ary energy, and that all moderation in deal- 
ing with them v/as the expedient of weak men 
or of traitors, he impressed his strong will 
and earnest purpose upon every feature of his 
administration. He saw then, what the 
President has finally discovered and told us 
in his last message, that "the dogmas of the 
quiet past are inadequate to the stormy 
present ;" that " as our case is new, so we 
must think anew and act anew;" and that 
" we must disenthral ourselves, and then we 
shall save our country." I believe no com- 
mander in the public service has thus fav 
shown more military genius, or been more 
successful, considering the circumstances of 
his command ; and it should be remembered 
to his credit that the victories of our arms in 
the West, early in last year, were achieved 
upon the exact lines of march which he 
planned and published in September of the 
preceding year. When he issued his pro- 
claniiition of freedom the military enthasiasm 



of the people was unchilled. With gladness 
and thanksgiving they received it as a new 
sign of promise. Even such Democratic 
papers as the Boston Post, Detroit Free 
Press, Chicago Times, and New York Herald, 
approved of it, while it stirred and united the 
people of the loyal States during the ten days 
of life allotted it by the Government, far 
more than any other event of this war. The 
President, in an evil hour, annulled it ; and 
the boiled-down malice and meanness which 
it provoked, and which were poured out so 
copiously through Adjutant General Thomas, 
finfilly effected the intended change in the 
command of this department. Prom this 
conduct of the Government towards General 
Fremont dates the pro-slavery reaction which 
we now witness. Beginning then, it has 
gained force and volume every hour since. 
It balked the popular enthusiasm which else 
would have drawn along with it even multi- 
tudes of conservative men. It caused timid 
and halting sjiirits to become cowards out- 
right. It gave new life to the slave power, 
and encouraged fiercer assaults upon "aboli- 
tionism." The Democratic party, which the 
war had pretty eflTectually driven into re- 
tirement, began to assume its former preroga- 
tives, and manifest its sympathy for treason. 
Sir, I can never think of the woes and sor- 
rows with which this war has deluged our 
country within the past twelve months, with- 
out deploring the malign influence which led 
the Administration to strike down a Repub- 
lican major general in the midst of a glorious 
career, and in defiance of the sentiment of the 
people, while Democratic generals, who wer- 
lauded by every rebel synipathizer through- 
out the country, and whose incapacity or dis- 
loyalty could not have been unknowm to the 
Government, have been persistently kept at 
the head of our great military departments. 

Mr. Chairman, while the past is beyond our 
control, its lesson for the future should not go 
unheeded. The Government can not "escape 
history" ; but it can atone, in some degree, for 
the great wrong it has done the country 'and 
General Fremont, by restoring him, without 
further delay, to active service, with a com- 
mand befitting his rank and merits. Every 
consideration of justice and patriotism pleads 
for this. He has been the victim of the most 
cruel injustice and the most unmerited and 
mortifying humiliation. The President knows 
this. The military conduct of General Fre- 
mont will bear the most rigid scrutiny, while 
his character is without a strain. The policy of 
his proclamation has been vindicated by time, 
and mora than vindicated by the Administra- 
tion itself. Let this policy be committed to 
the hands of its undoubted friends. The re- 
storation of General Fremont would at once 
signalize the earnestness and sense of justic* 
of the President, and win back to him the 
confidence of the people. It would be a con- 
spicuous milestone in the progress of the Go- 
vernment, and most fitly follow the grand 
message which proclaimed freedom to mil- 
lions on the first day of the new year. la th^ 



18 



name of the country let it "be done; and let 
restitution be made to every other oflicer in 
our armies who has been tlie victim of Demo- 
cratic policy. The Government, which at 
first sought to s]iare slavery, now seelcs to 
destroy it. At last it has a policy; and I 
hold that no man is fit to lead our armies, or 
to hold any civil position, who does not sus- 
tain that policy. Our only hope lies in a 
vigorous prosecution of the war and the over- 
throw of Democratic rule. I care little for 
inere names. Por such generals as Kose- 
crans, Butler, Bayard, Rousseau, Wallace, 
Dumont, and Corcoran, and such civilians as 
Stanton, Bancroft, Owen, and Dickinson, I 
have only words of praise. They are heartily 
for their country, and as heartily despise the 
Democratic leaders who gabble about com- 
promise with rebels. The recognized leaders 
of the Democratic partj', judged by their 
avowed policy, are disloyal in spirit and pur- 
pose. They talk about the " Constitution as 
it is," while conniving at its destruction by 
rebels, and oftering them peace on the basis of 
a reconstructed Government and another Con- 
stitution. They clamor for "the Union as it 
was," and mean by this the Union more 
■completely than ever under the domination 
of slavery. I know what I hazard by this 
freedom of speech. I know that should De- 
mocratic policy continue to sway this Ad- 
ministration, still further disasters may over- 
take our arms. I know that the people may 
finally reel and sicken under the prolonged 
spectacle of blood and treasure poured out in 
vain ; and that the restoi-ation of the Demo- 
cratic party to power may be the result, 
followed by a compromise inaugurating a 
'' reign of terror" in the free States far more 
relentless than that which prevailed in the 
South prior to the war. Demagogues, point- 
ing the people to the desolation and ruin of 
the country caused by a profitless "abolition 
war," and stimulated by southern leaders 
hungering and thirsting for revenge, may 
usher in an era of lawlessness and blood 
scarcely paralleled in history. The leaders 
of Republicanism, whose counsels, if followed, 
would have saved the country, may be con- 
fronted by dungeons, gibbets, and exile, 
under the new policy which the slave power, 
maddened by success, would dictate. 

Sir, it is because of the remorseless despo- 
tism which Democratic policy would certainly 
establish that I denounce it, and plead with 
the President to smite it with all the power of 
the Government, if he would save either his 
ountry or himself. The Republic of our 



fathers at this moment swings in horrid 
alternation between life and death. To falter 
or hesitate now is self-destruction. Rose- 
water statesmanship will not meet the crisis. 
Nothing can save us but the earnestness 
wliich finds its reflex in the rebels, and the 
courage which gathers strength from despair. 
A wise policy of the war is not enough. 
Proclamations of freedom will, of themselves, 
accomplish little. What we need is action, 
instant, decisive, defiant action, scourging 
faithless men from power, sweeping away 
obstacles, and kindling in the popular heart 
the fires of a new courage and hope. The 
Government should arm the colored men of 
the free States as well as the slaves of the 
South, and thereby give efiect to the procla- 
mation of freedom. It should at once organ- 
ize a bureau of emancipation, to take charge 
of the great interests devolved upon it by the 
extinction of slavery. While paying a fair 
assessment for the slaves of loyal owners, it 
should digest an equitable homestead policy, 
parceling out the plantations of rebels in small 
farms for the enjoyment of the freedmen, 
who have earned their right to the soil by 
genei'ations of oppression, instead of selling it 
in large tracts to speculators, and thus laying 
the foundation of a system of land monopoly 
in the South scarcely less to be deplored than 
slavery itself. It should seize all property 
belonging to traitors, and use it in defraying 
the expenses of the war. It should, as far as 
possible, send all disloj-al persons beyond our 
lines. It should see to it that corrupt army 
contractors are shot. It should deal W'ith 
rebels as having no rights vinder the Consti- 
tution, or by the laws of war, but the right to 
die. It should make war its special occupa- 
tion and study, using every weapon in its 
terrible armory in blasting, forever, the 
organized diabolism which now employs all 
the enginery of hell in its work of national 
murder, and threatens to make our country 
the grave of liberty on earth. Such an 
earnestness, thus born of the unutterable guilt 
of the rebels and the peril of great and price- 
less interests, and sustained by a firm faith in 
the justice of our cause and the smiles of our 
Maker, would speedily restore our country to 
the glad embrace of peace, and reassure its 
promise of free government to the victims of 
despotic power throughout the world. Our 
liberties would be saved from present de- 
struction, and new pulsations of life would be 
sent down through all the coming generations 
of men. 



ffomesteads for Soldiers on the Lands of Bebels. 



SIPEimOS: OIF 

Hon. GEOEQE W. JULIAN". 

In the house OE EEPEESENTATIVES, Makch 18, 18C4. 



The HousG liavins under consideration the 
bill reported from the Committee on Pahlic 
Lands amendatory of the homestead law, 
together with the amendments thereto, 

Mr. JxJLiAisr said : 

Mr Speaker: During the past month I 
prepared and reported from the Committee 
on Public Lands a bill to provide homesteads 
for persons in the military and naval service 
of the United States, on the forfeited and con- 
fiscated lands of rebels. The bill was re-com- 
mitted and printed; and my purpose was to 
discuss its provisions under the general call of 
committees for reports, which will bring the 
subject directly before the House for its ac- 
tion. I find, however, in the crowded state 
of our business, that this would delay my 
purpose indefinitely; and I have therefore 
■concluded to avail myself of the opportunity 
now olfered to submit what I have to say. 

The measure referred to will be considered 
a novel one, but it should not therefore be 
regarded with surprise or disfavor. Our 
country is in a novel condition. The civil 
war in which we are engaged is one of the 
grandest novelties the world has ever seen. 
We are every day brought face to face with 
new questions, and compelled to accept the 
new duties which lie in our path. Who- 
soever comprehends this crisis, and is willing 
to assume its burdens, must keep step to the 
march of events, and turn his back upon the 
past. 

The bill I have reported, however, is less a 
novelty in its principles than in their appli- 
cation to new and vmlooked for conditions. 
It involves, among other things, the policy of 
of free homesteads to actual settlers; and 
since this policy is now seriously menaced, I 
may be allowed to refer briefly to the sub- 
ject, by way of preface to what I shall have 
"to say on the special matter before us. 

Our homestead law was approved May the 
20th, 1862. Its enactment was a long delayed, 
but magnificent triumph of freedom and free 
labor over the slave power. While that 
power ruled the Government, its success was 
impossible. By recognizing the dignity of 
labor and the equal rights of the million, it 
threatened the very 'life of the oligarchy 
which had so long stood in its way. The 
slaveholders understood this perfectly; and 



hence they resisted it, reinforced by their 
northern allies, with all the zeal and despera- 
tion with vvhich they resisted " abolitionism" 
itself. Its final success is among the blessed 
compensations of the bloody conflict in which 
we are plunged. This policy takes for granted 
the notorious fact that our public lands have 
practically ceased to be a source of revenue. 
It recognizes the evils of land monopoly on the 
public domain, as well as in the old States, / 
and looks to its settlement and improvement 
as the true- aim and highest good of theEe- 
public. It disowns, as iniquitous, the princi- 
ple which would tax our landless poor men a 
dollar and a quarter per acre for the privilege 
of cultivating the earth; for the privilege of 
making it a subject of taxation, a source of 
national revenue, and a home for themselves 
and their little ones. It assumes, to use the 
words of General Jackson, that " the wealth 
and strength of a country are its population," 
and that "the best part of that population are 
the cultivators of the soil." This bold and 
heroic statesman urged this policy thirty-two 
years ago; and had it then been adopted, 
coupled with adequate guards against the 
greed of speculators, millions of landless men 
who have since gone down to their graves in 
the weary conflict with poverty and hardship, 
would have been cheered and blest with inde- 
pendent homes on the public domain. Wealth 
incalculable, quarried from the mountains 
and wrung from the forests and prairies of the 
AVest, would have poured into the federal 
coft'ers. The question of slavery in our na- 
tional territories would have found a peaceful 
solution in the steady advance and sure em- 
pire of free labor, whilst slavery in its strong- 
holds, girdled by free institutions, might have 
been content to die a natural death, instead of 
ending its godless career in an infernal leap 
at the nation's throat. 

The homestead act did not go into eff'ect 
till the first of January, 1863. Within four 
months from that date, notv/ithstanding the 
troubled state of the country, more than a 
million of acres were taken up under its pro- 
visions; and at the close of the year ending 
September the 30th, this amount was in- 
creased to nearly a million and a half. Peace 
will soon revisit the land and resurrect the 
nation to a new life. The energy and activ- 
ity of the people, now directed to the business 



20 



of war, will be dedicated afresh to industrial 
pursuits. Many thousands in the loyal Wtates 
who will have caught the spirit of travel and 
adventure, and far greater multitudes in the 
old world who will ho tempted to our shores, 
will lay hold of the homestead law as their 
glad refuge and sure help. It will he the day- 
star of hope to millions beyond the sea, as 
it is now the fond child of the millions of our 
own people who inarch under tlie old flag of 
our fathers. Should it stand for ten years to 
come, its blessings will outstrip the most san- 
guine anticipations of its friends. Its over- 
throw, I have said, is threatened; and this is 
done by indirection, as well as open assault. 
Since the date of its passage, Congress has 
granted nearly seven millions of acres for the 
benefit of agricultural colleges, and about 
twenty millions to aid in the construction of 
railroads. There are now pending before 
Congress, bills making other grants for rail- 
roads amounting to nearly seventy millions 
of acres. We have a project before us which 
grants nearly seven millions of acres for the 
education of the children of soldiers ; another 
granting two hundred thousand acres in the 
State of Michigan for the establishment of 
female colleges, which of course would be 
extended to" the other States ; and another 
granting ten millions of acres for the cstab- 
mont of Normal schools for yoving ladies. 
Every day witnesses the birth of new projects, 
by which our public lands may be fritted 
sway and the benificient policy of the home- 
stead law mutilated and destroyed. And, 
simultaneously with the development of this 
backward movement, and as if to aid it, spec- 
ulators are hovering over the public domain, 
picking and culiiug largo tracts of the best 
lands, and thus cheating the government out 
of their productive wealth, and the poor man 
out of the home, which else might be his at 
tho end of the war. Whilst the homestead 
policy is thus invaded by gradual approaches, 
and indirect attack, its overthrow is boldly 
demanded as a financial necessity. A veteran 
public journalist, and one of the foremost 
party leaders of our time, proposes to go back 
from tho Christian dispensation of free homes 
And actual settlement to the Jewish darkness 
of land speculators and public plunder. He 
v/ants money to pay our immense national 
debt, and seeks to obtain it by levying on the 
lands which the nation has already dedicated 
by Iaw to occupancy and cultivation as the 
.sure means of revenue. What we want and 
tho(jrOvornment needs is immigration. This is 
demonstrated by tho report of lion. Samuel B. 
Ruggles, to the International Congress which 
mcrat ]>urlin in last September. He takes 
the eight food-producing States of Ohio, Indi- 
ana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnes- 
sota, Iowa, and Missouri, and shows that 
between tho years 1850 and 18C0, their popu- 
tion increased 3,554,095, of whom a very large 
proportion were emigrants from the old States 
and from Europe. He shows that this intlax 
of population increased the quantity of im- 
proved land in those States, within the same 



period, 25,146,054 acres; tliat the cereal pro- 
ducts of these States increased 248,210,028 
bushels; that their swine increased 2,503,224; 
their cattle 2,831,098. He further shows that 
within the same period, the assessed value of 
real and j)ersonal estate of these States was 
augmented §2,810,000,000. These to a great 
extent are the direct results of immigration ; 
and in the light of these facts the interest and 
duty of the (Jovernment are palpable. By all 
hcmorable and reasonable means it should 
tempt Europe to send her people to our 
shores. From 1850 to 1800 tho immigration 
averaged, annually, 270,762, giving a total of 
5,062,414. Within the next ten years, should 
the homestead policy continue, the number of 
immigrants will probably far transcend all 
precedent, while increasing multitudes from 
our older States will join in the grand pro- 
cession towards the West. If Thurlow Weed 
wishes to use tlie public domain in paying 
our national debt, here is the process. It is 
simply to give heed to the divine injunction 
to "multiply and replenish the earth." It is 
to give liomes to the millions who need them, 
and at the same time coin their labor into 
national wealth by marrying it to the virgin 
soil which woos the cultivator. It is to com- 
pel the earth to yield up her fruits, so that 
commerce may transmute them into silver 
and gold. Thus only can we solve the prob- 
lem of our finances, so far as the public lands 
are concerned. The project of paying a debt 
of three thousand millions of dollars, or even 
the interest on it, by the sale of these lands, 
is sublimely ridiculous; whilst the proposi- 
tion to repeal the homestead law is a proposi- 
tion to encourage speculation, to plunder the 
Government, to betray the just rights of mil- 
lions by violating the plighted faith of tho 
nation, to hinder the march of civilization, and 
to weaken the force of our example as a Ee- 
public, asserting equal rights and equal laws 
as the basis of its policy. 

But I pass from this topic. I have adverted 
to it, partly because I desired to sound the 
alarm of danger in the ears of the people, and 
thus avert its approach, and partly because 
the considerations I have presented bear di- 
rectly upon the measure now before the 
House. 

Mr. Speaker, this rebellion has frequently, 
and very justly, been styled a slave-holders' 
rebellion. It is likewise a land-holders' rebel- 
lion, for the chief owners of slaves have been 
the chief owners 'of hind. Probably three- 
fourths, if not five-sixths of the lands in the 
rebel states at the beginning of the war be- 
longed to the slave-holders, who constituted 
onh' about one-fiftieth part of the whole 
population of those States; whilst of the entire 
landed estate of the three hundred and fifty 
thousand slave-holders of the South, at least 
two-thirds belonged to less than one-third of 
their number. I make my calculations from 
our census tables, and such other information 
as I find within my reach. The bill I have 
reported, therefore, contemplates no general 
seizure and confiscation of the property of the 



21 



people in the insurrectionary districts. It 
looks to no sweeping measures against the 
rghts of the masses, but simply to the break- 
ing up and distribution of vast monopolies, 
which have made the few the virtual owners of 
the multitude, v;lietlier white or black. It is 
a bill to restore the people to their inalienable 
rights, by chastising the traitors who con- 
spired against the government. It proposes 
to vest in the United States the lands which 
may be forfeited by confiscation in punish- 
ment of treason, or of other crimes under 
municipal laws; by confiscation as a right of 
war, by military seizure, or by process in -rem; 
and by sales of non-payment of taxes. The 
quantity of real estate which shall thus pass 
from the hands of rebels cannot now be defin- 
itely determined, but in seeking to estimate 
it we should bear in mind one important con- 
sideration. The war which the rebels are 
waging against us is no longer a mere insur- 
rection. It is not a grand national riot, but a 
civil, territorial war between them and the 
United States. Having taken their stand 
outside of the Constitution, and rested their 
cause on the nalvcd ground of lawless might, 
they have, of necessity, no constitutional 
rights For them the Constitution has ceased 
to exist. They are belligerents, enemies of 
the United States. They still owe allegiance 
to the government, and are still traitors, but 
thej'' are at the same time public enemies, who 
have simply the rights of war and are to be 
dealt with according to the laws of war. The 
rights of war and the rights of peace cannot 
co-exist in the hands of rebels. One party to 
a contract cannot violate it, and yet hold the 
other bound; and hence the Constitution has 
nothing whatever to do with our treatment of 
the rebels, unless we shall see fit volunta- 
rily to waive the rights of war, and deal with 
them as citizens merely. I am not now ut- 
tering my own opinion, but the solemn 
judgment of the Nation itself, speaking au- 
thoritatively through the highest court in the 
Union. According to the decision, of that 
court, a civil war between the United States 
and the rebels has been carried on for more 
than two years and a half. In the celebrated 
prize cases decided last spring, and reported 
in 2 Black's Keports, p. 635, Judge Grier says : 
"the pai'ties to a civil war are in the same 
predicament as two nations who engage in a 
contest, and have recourse to arms;" that "a 
civil war exists and maybe prosecuted, on the 
same footing as if those opposing the govern- 
ment were foreign invaders, whenever the 
regular course of justice is interrupted by 
revolt, rebellion, or insurrection, so that the 
courts cannot be kept open;" and that "the 
present civil war between the United States 
and the so-called Confederate States has such 
a character and magnitude as to give the 
United States the same rights and powers 
■which they might exercise in tlie case of a 
national or foreign war." Such, Mr. Speaker, 
is the law as to the relations existing between 
the rebels and the United States. I am not 
arguing the point, because all argument is 



closed by this decision. The rebels are bel- 
ligerents, and when they shall be eifeetually 
vanquished, they will have simply the rights 
of a conquered people under the law of nations, 
that is to say, such rights as we shall choose 
to grant them, according to the laws of war, 
untrammelled by the Constitution of the Uni- 
ted States. 

In the light of this settled principle, Mr. 
Speaker, I judge of the extent of rebel terri- 
tory which must fall under our control. The 
war will increase in intensity and fierceness 
to the end. The exasperation of the rebels 
will naturally keep pace with our successes. 
Our war policy, which has been steadily grow- 
ing more and more earnest and radical for the 
past two years, will not again become a " war 
on peace principles." The amnesty procla- 
mation may reach the case of many, but 
should it reach even all who are not expressly 
excepted by its terms, there will still be au 
immense territory falling under our power. 
Sir, whether we have willed it or not, this is 
now a war oi subjugation, and the law of na- 
tions must govern the parties and the settle- 
ment of the dispute. We shall not be con- 
fined to the penal enactments of Congress on 
the subject of treason, which require an in- 
dictment, a regular trial, and a conviction. 
The condemnation of rebel property need not 
depend upon the prosecution of its owner 
through a grand jury, who may be wholly or 
in part secessionists, nor upon his conviction 
by a petit jury of like character, nor upon the 
finding ot a bill within any statute of limita- 
tions. Eesting our case on the law of nations 
and the laws of war, we are not compelled to 
seek the land of the rebel through a trial 
which must be bad in a country in which tho 
ofience was committed, and in which both 
couit and jury may be in sympathy with the 
accused. The several penal acts of Congress 
on these subjects, and the ordinary safeguards 
of law applicable to the rights of citizens in 
a time of peace are not in our way. The war 
powers of the government, as asserted and 
defined in the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th sections 
of the confiscation act of July 17, 1862, point 
to a remedy as sweeping as it is just; namely, 
the military seizure, condemnation, and sale 
of the real estate of traitors and their abet- 
tors. A considerable quantity of land, it is 
true, may pass from the rebels by judicial 
proceedings against them for treason, and 
other crimes under municipal statutes. I 
know, too, that millions of acres must be for- 
feited by the non-payment of taxes. But, 
independent of these sources of title, and by 
virtue of militarj^ seizure and condemnation 
alone, a very large proportion of the lands 
within the insurrectionary districts, must vest 
in the government of the Caited States. 

If it be said that the government has no 
right to confiscate the fee simple of rebel 
States, I meet it with a direct denial. In 
what I have said, 1 have taken this right for 
granted. I have never doubted it for a mo- 
ment, and I shall not now argue the question. 
The hon.^st refusal of tho Tresidontj in last 



t2 



Juno, to allow Congress to touch the fee of 
rebels in arms against the nation, was the 
saddest and grandeet mistake of his life. That 
the right to do so was disputed and dehatcd 
in the last Congress, as it has hecn extensively 
in this, hy some of our wisest statesmen antl 
greatest lawyers, will hereafter he set down 
among the political curiosities of this century. 
Our fathers were not fools, but Avise men, Avho 
nrmed the nation with the power to crush its 
foes, as well as to protect its friends. '• The 
Constitution was made for the people, not the 
people for the Constitution." It was not de- 
signed as a shield in the hands of traitors, but 
as the sword in the hands of the government 
to smite them to the earth. It recognizes th<i 
law of nations and the laws of war ; nor was it 
possible for our country to esca]ie them. The 
builders of our national ship did not so fash- 
ion and rig her that she could sail only in calm 
weather and over smooth seas, but they qual- 
ified her to ride out the fiercest tempest in 
safety, and to defy all pirates. That the na- 
tion, in this struggle for its life against red- 
handed traitors and assassins, has no power 
to confiscate their lands, is a proposition 
which gives comfort to every rebel symjia- 
thizer in the country, while 'it insults both 
loyalty and common sense. The people know 
better, and on this question, their voice must 
be heeded. They do not believe, but they 
Jcnow that the lands of rebels are subject to our 
power under the laws of war, as well as their 
personal property, their negroes, or their 
lives. The government, in the course of this 
struggle, has learned many lessons. Others 
are yet to be mastered. Having learned how 
to strike at slavery as the wicked cause of the 
war, and to arm the negroes in the national 
defence, it must now lay hold of the lands of 
rebels. I believe our triumph over them is 
not so near at hand as we generally suppose. 
The most terrific fighting of the war is yet 
to come. Thej' do not dream of surrender, 
or compromise, on any conceivable terms. 
They will resist us, to the end, with a spirit 
as remorseless as death, and as bitter as the 
ashes of hell. They must be overcome and 
crushed by the powers of war, and we must 
employ, with all the might which can be 
kindled by the crisis, every weapon known to 
the law of nations. Congress must repeal the 
Joint resolution of last year which protects the 
fee of rebel land-holders. The President, as 
I am well advised, now stands ready to join 
us in such action. Should we fail to do this, 
the courts must so interpret the joint resolu- 
tion as to make its repeal needless. Should 
both Congress and the courts stand in the way 
of the nation's life, then "the red lightning 
of the people's wrath," must consume the re- 
creant men who refuse to execute the popular 
will. Our country, united and free, must be 
saved, at whatever hazard or cost; and noth- 
ing, not even the Constitution, must bo allowed 
to hold back the uplifted arm of the govern- 
ment, in blasting the power of the rebels for 
ever. 
I come, then, Mr. Speaker, to the practical I 



question involved in this bill. This conflict 
is to be ended by hard, desperate, and per- 
haps protracted fighting. "\Ve shall certainly 
win; and our triumph will inevitably divest 
the little to a vast body of land in the rebel 
Stat(!S, and place; it under our control. I 
think it entirely safe to conclude tluit it will 
constitute more than luilf, and probably threo- 
fourths, of all the cultivated lands in the re- 
bellious districts. It will certainly, in any 
event, cover millions of acres. It will include 
all lands against which proceedings hi ran 
shall be instituted, undertheprovisions ofthc 
act to suppress insurrections, and punish trea- 
son and rebellion, approved July 17, 18G2; all 
lands which may be sold under the provisions 
of the act for the collection of direct taxes in 
insurrectionary districts, approved June Tth, 
1862; and a''l lands which may be sold under 
the provisions of the act to provide internal 
revenue to support the Government, ajiproved 
July 1st of the same year. 

"V\'hat shall be done with these immense es- 
tates, brought within our power by the acts of 
rebels ? One of two policies, radically antag- 
onistic, must be accepted. They must be 
allowed to fall into the hands of speculators, 
and become the basis of new and frightful 
monopolies, or they must be placed under the 
jurisdiction of the Government, in trust for 
the people. The alternative is now presented, 
and presses upon us for a speedy decision. 
Under the laws of Congress now in force, un- 
checked b}' counter legislation, these lands 
will be purchased and monopolized by men 
who care far more for their own niereenarv 
gains than for the real progress and glory of 
our country. Instead of being parcelled out 
into small homesteads, to be tilled by their 
own independent owners, they will be bought 
in large tracts, and thus not only deprive the 
great mass of landless laborers of the oppor- 
tunity of acquiring homes, but place them at 
the mercy of the lords of the soil. The old 
order of things will be SAvept away, but a new 
order, scarcely less to be deplored, Avill suc- 
ceed. In place of the slaveholding land-own- 
er of the South, lording it over hundreds of 
slaves and thousands of acres, we shall have 
the grasping monopolist of the North, whoso 
dominion over the freedmcn and jjoor Avhites 
will be more galling than slavery itself, which 
in some degree tempers its despotism through 
the interest of the tyrant in the health and 
welfare of his victims. The maxim of the 
slaveholder that " capital should own labor," 
will be as frightfully exeniplified under the 
system of wages-slavery, the child of land 
monopoly, as under the system of chattel 
slavery, which has so long scourged the south- 
ern States. What we slmuld demand is a 
policy that will guarantee homes to the loyal 
millions who need them, and thus guard their 
most precious rights and interests against the 
remorseless exactions of capital, and the piti- 
less rapacity of avarice. The helpless condi- 
tion of the poor of the rebel States, when cap- 
italists shall have monopolized the land, is 
already foreshadowed iu the recent report of 



23 



Mr. Yeatman, of the Western Sanitary Com- 
mission. He says : 

" The poor negroes are everywhere greatly op- 
pressed at their condition. They all testify that if 
they were only paid their little waijes as they earn 
them, so that they could purchase clothing, and i"ar- 
nished with the p"ovisions promised, they could stand 
it ; but to work and get poony paid, poorly fed, and not 
doctored when sick, is more than they can endure. 
Among the thousands whom I questioned none showed 
the l(\tst unwillingness to work. If they could ouly be 
paid fair wages they would be contented and happy. 
They do not realize that they are free men. They say 
that" they are told they are, but then they are taken 
and hired out to men who treat them, so far as pro- 
viding for them is concerned, for worse than their 
' secesh' misters did. Besides this, they feel that 
their i)iyor hire is lower now than it was when the 
'secesh' used to hire them. 

" ihe parties leasing plantations, and employing 
these negroes, do it frr.m no motives, either of loyalty 
O' humanity. The desire of gain alone prompts them, 
and they care little whether they make it out of the 
blood of those they employ, or from the soil. There 
are, ot course, exceptions ; but I am informe.l that tlie 
majority of ihe lessees were only adventurers, camp 
followsrs, ' army sharks,' as they are termed, whu 
hitve turn°d aside from what they consider their 
legitimate prey, the poor soldier, to gatVier the riches 
of the land which his pi-owess has laid open to them. 
I feel that the fathers and brothers and friends of these 
brave men should have an opportunity to reap, under 
a more equitable system fir the labor, the reward of 
the months of toil and exposure it has cost to open 
this country to tlie institutions of freedom and com- 
pensated labor. If these plantations were required to 
be subdivided into parcels or tracts, to suit the views 
and means of our western men, say in farms of from 
one to two hundred acres, thousands would soon flock 
to the South to lease them, especially when it was 
known that one acre of ground there cultivated in 
cotton would yield, in dollars, ten times as much as at 
home. Besides, this subdivision would attract a loiial 
population, who wo'ild protect the country against any 
guerrilla bands thit might inlest it." 

Mr. Speaker, the poor whites of the South 
will be as powerless to take care of themselves 
as the freedmen, unless the Government shall 
arm them against their masters. "Subdivi- 
sion'' of the land, as Mr. Yeatman says, 
would also secure a loyal popuJat/on, since 
every man who has a home to Jove and to 
defend will naturally love his country. This 
rebellion will present the strong-est tempta- 
tions to land monopoly that were ever ofiered 
to the greed of avarice and power. The 
rich lands of the South have beencursed hy 
this evil from the beginning, and without 
the interposition of Congress the system will 
be continued, and vitalized anew by falling 
into fresh hands. The degraded and thrift- 
less condition of the peop/e, the heritage of 
centuries of bondage, wiJ] pave the way for 
land monopoly in more g-rfevous forms than 
have yet been recorded in ancient or modern 
times. Society can not possibJy be organized 
on a Republican basis, because a grinding 
aristocracy, resting uj^on large landed 
estates, will convert the mass of the people 
into mere drudges and dependants. African 
slavery may not exist in name, but the few 
will practically control the fortunes of the 
many, irrespective of color or race. In such 
communities public improvements will neces- 
sarily languish. Wasteful and slovenly farm- 
ing will stamp upon the country the impress 
of dilapidation, while reducing the pro- 
ductiveness of the soil, and hindering the 
growth of manufactures and commerce. In 



the midst of large landed estates, towns and 
villages can neither be multiplied nor enjoy 
a healthy growth* The want of diversity of 
pursuits and competition in business, will 
palsy the energies of the people. The educa- 
tion of the masses will be impossible, since 
the establishment and support of schools 
within convenient reach of the people can 
not be secured. The proprietors of the great 
estates, as has been well remarked, will be 
feudal lords, while the poor will have no 
feudal rights. Under the tendency of a 
false system, society will steadily gravitate 
towards the example of South America and 
Mexico, where some estates are larger than 
two or three of the smaller States of our 
Union. The country will find its likeness 
in England, in which the smaller land- 
holders are daily being swallowed up by the 
larger. 

" In the civilized worM," says Dr. Clianning, "there 
are few sadder specticles than the present contrast in 
Great Britain ot unbounded wealth and lu.xury, with 
the starvation of thousands and tens of thousand.s, 
crowded into cellars and dens, without ventilation or 
light, compared with which the wigwam of the Indian 
is a palace. Jlisery, famine, brutal degradation, m the 
neighborhood and presenee of stately mansions, which 
ring with gaiety, and dazzle with pomp and unbounded 
profusion, shock us as does uo oilier wretchedness." 

Sir, the sympathy of the British aristocracy 
for the rebels is altogether natural. Land 
monopoly is slavery. The great English 
landlord looks upon the large slaveholders of 
the South as " brothers beloved," while the 
"sand-hillers" and "clay-eaters" of Carolina 
and Georgia are perhaps not more miserably 
degraded by unjust laws than the English 
agricultural laborer. Mr. Bancroft, describ- 
ing the condition of Italy some two thousand 
years ago, says : 

"The aristocracy owned the soil and its eultiv.itors. 
The vast capacity" for accumulation which the laws of 
society secure to capital in a greater degree than to 
personal exertion, displays itself nowhere so clearly as 
in slaveholding States, where the laboring class is but 
a portion of the capital of the opulent. As wealth 
consists chiefly in land and slaves, the rates of interest 
are, from universally operative causes, always com- 
piratively high ; the difhculty of advancing with bor- 
rowed capital proportionally great. The small land- 
holder finds himself unable to compete with those who 
are posses-ed of whole cohort-i of bondmen; his 
slaves, his lands, rapidly pass, in consequence of his 
debts, into the hands of the more opulent. The large 
plantations are continually KW.allowing up the smaller 
ones ; and land and slaves come to be engrossed by a 
few." 

This is not only an exact description of 
slavery as we have seen it in the southern 
States, but a parallel in principle to the 
system of aristocracy in England, founded on 
the monopoly of the soil. Travelers through 
that country speak of it as "thinly settled." 
Outside of the cities and towns this is true. 
Even the commons, on which the poor used 
to pasture their cattle and enjoy their games, 
are now enclosed by legalized land robbers. 
Those who demand a correction of these 
evils, in the name of justice and the people, 
are denounced as " Agrarians," just as the 
enemies of slavery in this countrj- are brand- 
ed as "Abolitionists." The slaveholding land 
monopolists of this country are to-day repay- 



24 



ing the bitter fruits of their unrighteous 
domination. A retribution to the aristocracy 
of England, not less terrible, is as certain to 
come as that pampered injustice finds no 
liuiits to its demands. 

But I need not dwell longer upon the evils 
of land monopoly. The history of civiliza- 
tion furnishes an unbroken testimony to these 
evils, and thus pleads with us, in the organi- 
sation of new civil communities, to fortify 
OTirselves against them. A grand oppor- 
tunity now presents itself for recognizing 
the principles of radical democracy in the 
establishment of new and regenerated States. 
We are summoned by every consideration of 
patriotism, humanity, and republicanism to 
lay the foundations of empire upon the 
"^during basis of justice and equal rights. 
No revolutionary or destructive ineitsures are 
required on our part. We are already in the 
midst of revolution and chaos. Through no 
fault of our own, the foundations of social 
and political order in the rebel States are 
subverted, and the elimination of a great 
disturbing clement opens up our pathway to 
the establishment of free Christian common- 
wealths on the ruins of the past. These 
States constitute one of the fairest portions of 
tlie globe. They are larger in area than all 
the free States of the North. They have a 
sea and gulf coast of more than six thousand 
miles in extent, and are drained by more 
than fifty navigable rivers, Avhieh are never 
closed to navigation by the rigor of the 
climate. They htive at least as rich a soil 
«s the States of the North, yielding great 
wealth-producing staples peculiar to them, 
and two or three crops in the year. They 
have a finer climate, and their agricultural, 
manufacturing, and commercial advantages 
are decidedly superior. Their geographical 
position is better, as respects the great com- 
mercial centres of the world. The institution 
of slavery, which has so long cursed these 
regions by excluding emigration, degrading 
labor, and impoverishing the soil, will very 
soon be expelled. The cry which already 
tiomes up from these lands is for free laborers. 
If wo otfer them free homesteads, and pro- 
tect their rights, they will come. John 
Bright, in a recent speech at Birmingham, 
astimates that within the past year 150,000 
people have sailed from England to New 
York. Let it be settled that slavery is dead, 
and that the estates of traitors in the South 
oan be had under the provisions of the home- 
stead law, and foreign emigration will 
be quadrupled, if not augmented tenfold. 
Millions in the old world, hungering and 
thirsting after the righteousness of free insti- 
.tutions, will flock to the sunny South, and 
mingle there with the swarms of our own 
people in pursuit of new homes under kindlier 
Rkies. Immigration has not slackened, even 
during this war, and in determining the di- 
rection it will take, it must bo remembered 
that settlements have very nearly reached 
their limits in the North and West. Kansas 
.iUid Nebraska are border States, and n.u;t so 



continue. Their storms, and draughts, and 
desert plains give a pretty distinct hint that 
the emigrant must seek his Eldorado in lati- 
tudes further south. In the new North- 
western States the richest lands have been 
purchased, and vast portions of them locked 
up by speculators. Their distance from the 
great markets for their produce, and their 
severe winters, will also check emigration in 
that direction, and incline it further south, 
if lands can be procured there with tolerable 
facility. The rebel States not only abound 
in cheap and fertile land, with cheap labor 
in the ])ersons of the freedmen to assist in its 
cultivation, but they possess great mineral 
resources. They have also extensive lines of 
railroads, which, in connection with their great 
rivers, bring almost every portion of their ter- 
ritory into communication with the sea. 

Mr. Speaker, nothing can atone for the 
woes and sorrows of this war but the thor- 
ough reorganization of society in these re- 
volted States. Now is the time to begin this 
work. We must nfit only cut up slavery, 
root and branch, but we must see to it that 
these teeming regions shall be studded over 
with small farms and tilled by free men. We 
must remember that "the best way to help 
the poor is to enable them to help them- 
selves." We must guard the equal rights of 
the people as a religious duty, for " Christi- 
anity is the root of all democracy, the highest 
fact in the rights of man." Labor must be 
rendered ho;n)rable and gainful, by securing 
to the laborer the fruits of his toil. Instead 
of the spirit of Caste and the law of Hate, 
which have so long blasted these regions, wo 
must build up homogeneous communities, in 
which the interest of each will be recognized 
as the interest of all. In.stead of an over- 
shadowing aristocracy, founded on the mono- 
poly of the soil, and its dominion over tlie 
poor, we must have no order of nobility but 
that of the laboring masses of the country, 
who fight its battles in war, and constitute 
its glory and its strength in peace. Instead 
of large estates, widely scattered settlements, 
wasteful agriculture, popular ignorance, poli- 
tical and social degradation, the decay of 
literature, the decline of manufactures and 
the arts, contempt for honest labor, and a 
pampered aristocracy, we must have small 
farms, closely associated communities, thrifty 
tillage, free schools, social independence, a 
health}'- literature, flourishing manufactures 
and mechanic arts, respect for honest labor, 
and equality of political rights. These ends, 
to a great extent, are provided for by the bill 
I have introduced, and no measure of more 
vital interest to the people has ever been 
submitted to the Congress of the United 
States. I voted for the bill which has passed 
tiiis House, providing for a Bureau of Eman- 
cipation, but I must regard this measure as 
a far better " frccdman's hill" than that of my 
honorable friend from Massachusetts, for it 
provides for the emancipation of all races, 
and the freedom of labor itself. Those re- 
gions, blighted by treason, must bo cared for 



25 



or abandoned, liy the general Government. 
The heaven-daring conspiracy of rebels in 
arms has placed them, or will place them, at 
our feet. Shall we hand them over to the 
speculator, in the hope of thereby securing a 
revenue to pay our national debt ? I have 
shown that the true source of revenue is the 
cultivation of the soil. The future of these 
rebellious States, involving the well-being of 
millions for generations to come, is now com- 
mitted to our hands. We can re-enact over 
them the political and social damnation of the 
past, or predestinate them to the blessedness 
and glory of a grand and ever-unfolding 
future. We can build up a magnificent con- 
stellation of free commonwealths, whose terri- 
tory can support a population of more than 
one hundred millions, on the basis of free 
labor and a just distribution of land among 
the people; or we can again organize society 
after the pattern of Europe, and thus spare 
the hideous cancer, which, in the words of 
Chateaubriand, '-has gnawed social order 
since the beginning of the world." Can we 
hesitate, in dealing with so fearful an alterna- 
tive? Shall we mock the Almighty by sport- 
ing with the heaven-permitted privilege now 
placed before us? Shall we heap curses on 
our children, when blessings are within our 
grasp? Sir, let us prove ourselves worthy of 
our day and of our work. Let us rise to the 
full height of our sublime opportunity, and 
thus make ourselves, under Providence, the 
creators of a new dispensation of liberty and 
peace. Then, in the eloquent language of 
Solicitor Whiting, "the hills and valleys of 
the South, purified and purged of all the guilt 
of the past, clothed with a new and richer 
verdure, will lift up their voices in thanks- 
giving to the Author of all good, who has 
granted to them, amidst the agonies of civil 
war, a new birth and a glorious transfigura- 
tion. Then, the people of the North and the 
people of the South, will again become one 
people, united in interests, in pursuits, in in- 
telligence, in religion, and in patriotic devo- 
tion to our common country." 

As regards the particular provisions of the 
bill before us, I need not occupy much of the 
time of this House. It has been printed, and 
gentlemen have had the opportunity of ex- 
amining it for themselves. It has been pre- 
pared with much care, and with the assistance 
of some of the best lawyers in the Union. 
The first and second sections of the bill 
provide the methods by which the title of 
rebel land owners shall vest in the United 
States under the acts of Congress now in 
force on the subject of confiscation and re- 
venue. I shall not discuss the power of the 
Government thus to acquire the title to this 
land, for it can not be controverted without 
overturning all the legislation of the last 
Congress on the subject of confiscation, in- 
ternal revenue, and the collection of taxes in 
insurrectionary districts. I have, in fact, 
already argued the question of power, in 
what I have said of our relations to the 
rebpls as belligerents. 



The third section provides for the survey 
of the lands in question as nearly as may be 
in forty acre lots. This is deemed necessary 
from the fact that in several of the insurrec- 
tionary districts the old system of irregular 
surveys exists, and not the present or rect- 
angular system. The section also provides 
for the appointment of necessary officers and 
their compensation, and contemplates the ap- 
plication and use of the machinery of the 
General Land Office within such districts. 

The fourth section gives a homestead of 
eighty acres to all soldiers who shall have 
served in the army or navy two years, and 
forty acres to all persons who shall have aided 
in the militarj^ service against the rebels for 
any period of time, either as soldiers or la- 
borers. It also extends the provisions of the 
homestead act of 1862 over these lands, and 
thus avoids any new and cumbersome regula- 
tions, and exacts a continuous residence of 
five years to consummate the title. 

The fifth section provides that after keep- 
ing the lands open for homesteads for five 
years, those remaining vacant shall be sold at 
public sale. It prohibits the sacrifice of 
them by fixing a minimum price, which they 
must bring. It also requires the purchaser 
to comply with the pre-emption act of 1841, 
prior to his receiving a patent, thus demand- 
ing a residence on the land and precluding an 
accumulation of it in the hands of specula- 
tors. These safeguards look to the benefit of 
the mass, and not the interests of a few, even 
after homesteads have been selected. This 
section also provides that proof of loyalty 
shall be made by all persons claiming rights 
under the bill. 

The sixth section, as will be seen, requires 
no comment. The seventh requires persons 
selecting improved lands to pay for whatever 
may be found of value on them, after an 
appraisement by persons regularly appointed 
for the purpose, and to pay the costs created 
by the proceeding. The effect will be that 
the expenses created by the act will be paid 
into the Treasury of the United States, and 
may exceed the expenditures which will be 
connected with its operations. 

The eighth section establishes an obviously 
just if not a necessary rule of construction as 
to persons of color, giving them equal rights 
with white men, and extends the inchoate 
rights of a settler to his heirs, or widow, who 
may complete payments and make proof. 

The ninth section places the execution of 
the act in the Department of the Interior, or 
that more immediately connected Avith the 
land system ; and the last section repeals all 
laws inconsistent with the provisions of this 
act. I will only add, that the act has nothing 
to do with real estate in towns, cities, and 
villages, which will, of course, continue to bo 
gold as heretofore. 

Those, Mr. Speaker, are the material pro- 
visions of the bill. They embody principles 
which I have endeavored to vindicate, by 
argument and by fact. If I am right, then 
every moment of delay is a golden oppor- 



26 



tnnity wasted forever. .Under the present 
policy of the government every passing day 
bears witness to the transfer of tliousands 
of acres of forfeited hinds to specidators. Ac- 
cording to Judge Underwood, more than two 
hundred millions of dollars worth of property 
in the State of Virginia, chiefly real estate, 
should be confiscated by the Government. 
Thousands of acres are now being sold in the 
vicinitj'- of this city. In September last, the 
President of the United States issued instruc- 
tions to the Tax Commissioners of South 
Carolina, providing for the sale of 40,845 
acres, of which 24,31G acres were to be sold to 
the highest bidder, in tracts of 320 acres. The 
remainder was to be sold to the heads of 
African families, for such sums, not less than 
one dollar and tweutj'-tive cents per acre, as 
the Government should see fit to demand. 
These sales are portions of a lot of 7G,775 
acres offered on the 9th of last March, when 
16,479 acres were sold to speculators ; making 
an aggregate of 40, 795 acres, which will have 
been sold in large tracts, leaving for the 
negro onl}- 16,479 acres which he may buy^ if 
he can raise the money to pay the price fixed 
by the Government. Such tiansactions as 
these, in Port Royal, where so much has 
been hoped for the freedman, are most signi- 
ficant. If any people have a divine right to 
these tropical lands, they are the slaves who 
have bought them, over and over, by their 
sweat and toil and blood, through centuries 
of oppression. Degraded and imbruited by 
servitude, mere children in knowledge and 
self-help, we require them to compete for 
their homesteads with the sharpened facul- 
ties of the white speculator, schooled in 
avarice by generations of money getting, 
who believes tho almighty dollar is the only 



living and true God, and would " run into 
the mouth of hell after a bale of cotton." 
Sir, our Government is false to its trust, 
infidel to its mission, if it shall lend its high 
sanction to such wanton injustice and wrong. 
Had I the power I would give a free home 
on the forfeited land of rebels to every bond- 
man in the insurrectionary districts. Let 
the Government at least give him an equal 
chance with our own race, in the settlement 
and enjoyment of his native land. Less than 
this would be a mockery of justice and an 
insult both to decency and humanity. He is 
excluded from tlie Northern States and ter- 
ritories by their uncongenial climate, by his 
attachments to his birth place, and by Anglo- 
Saxon domination and enterprise. Let the 
Government which has so long connived at 
his oppression now make sure to him a free 
homestead on the land of his oppressor. Let 
us deal justly with the African, and thereby 
lay claim to justice for ourselves. Let us re- 
member, in the language of our patriotic 
Chief Magistrate, that " We cannot escape 
history. We of this Congress, and of this 
administration, will be remembered in spite 
of ourselves. No personal significance or in- 
significance can spare one or another of us. 
The fiery trial through which we pass will 
light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the 
latest generation. In giving freedom to the 
slave, wo assure freedom to the free; honor- 
able alike in what we give and what we pre- 
serve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, 
the last best hope of earth. Other means 
may succeed; this could not fail. The way 
is plain, peaceful, generous, just — a way 
which, if followed, the world will forever 
applaud, and God must forever bless." 



Somesteads for Soldiers— Who are their Friends? 



sipeikicih: oib^ 



Hon. GEOEGE ^Y. JULIAIsT 

In the house OP KEPEESENTATIVES, Mat 12th, 18G4. 



The House having under considenitiou the 
bill to secure to persons iu the militarj- or naval 
service of the United States homesteads on con- 
fiscated or forfeited estates in insurrectionary 
districts, aa^ for other purposes — 

Mr. Julian said: 

Mh. Speaker: I propose this morniug, after 
briefly referring to some of the objec-tious which 
have been urged against this bill, to call for 
a final vote upon it. I discussed its principles 
and policy several weeks ago in a somewhat 
carefully prepared speech. Other gentlemen 
have since resinned the argument; and believ- 
ing the House now prepared to vote upon the 
pi-bposition, I do not wish to hinder other im- 
jiortant legislation by needlessly prolonging the 
debate. If there is any besetting sin which can 
fairly be charged to tliis Congress it is a redun- 
dancy of talk. 

The gentleman from Kew York [Mr. Fer- 
nando Wood] objects to this measure because, 
as he asserts, it assumes that the Union is never 
by any possibility to be restored. He thinks it 
recognizes and aims at the destruction of the 
Union, and says he never will do anything to 
hinder its restoration. 

Sir, I do not understand the force of the gen- 
tleman's objection. I do not see how the con- 
fiscation of the lands of rebels in arms 
against the Government, or the sale of aban- 
doned estates for the non-payment of taxes by 
the vilhiius who have forced the Government to 
levy them, can in any degree harm the integri- 
ty of this Union. On the contrary, if the Union 
is to be saved at all, the best practicable mode 
of doing it is to lay hold of these confiscated 
lands and these abandoned estates and make 
such disposition of them as is proposed by this 
bill. 

Mr. Fernaxdo Wood. I am very sure the 
gentleman from Indiana would not intentionally 
represent me as saying what I did not say. I 
said the bill was an obstruction to the restora- 
tion of tlie Union. That was one of the objec- 
tions I made to it. 

Mr. Julian. I accept the gentleman's quali- 
fication, but I do not see how it relieves him. I 
wish he had explained in his speech on yester- 
day how the passage of this bill could in any 
way obstruct the restoration of the Union. On 
the contrary, I think it would do more to ce- 
ment and perpetuate the Union than any legis- 
lative measure that could possibly be devised. 
Here, for instance, are lands belonging to Toombs 
of Georgia, a conspicuous rebel. He owns as I 
understand, some forty thousand acres of rich 
land in the State of Texas; enovigh to furnish 
an independent homestead of one hundred 
acres each to four hundred soldiers of this war. 
How will it militate against the restoration of 



the Union to parcel out these lands in free 
homesteads to the soldiers and sailors now 
fighting for the life of the Republic? Can the 
gentleman tell? 

Let me state another fact. Mr. Thompson, 
one of the Cabinet ministers of Jimmy Bu- 
chanan, owns lands which are said to be worth 
$1,000,000, bonglit by him at from ten to eighty 
cents an acre. I do not comprehend how the 
confiscation of these estates and their distribu- 
tion among our soldiers can endanger the Union ; 
how it can do otherw'ise than subserve the ends 
of justice, order, liberty, and peace in the re- 
volted States. These are the pledges, not the 
perils, of a real Union. 

Here is another conspicuous rebel, Robert TT. 
Johnson, of the State of Arkansas, holding an 
estate perhaps equally as large; and I believe 
Davis, Floyd, Wigfall, Slidell, Cobb, andin fact 
all the rebel chiefs have largely monopolized 
the lands of the South, while" owning and di- 
recting the labor of the people, black and 
white. 

This bill proposes to jiarcel out all these 
estates among the soldiers and seamen of this 
war, and the gentleman from New York says it 
will obstruct the restoration of the Union ? 

Mr. Speaker, let me submit to the gentleman 
from New York a few other facts. Under the 
legislation of Congress in the old days of slave- 
breeding Democracy, when old Jimmy Bu- 
chanan was its king, and such men as the gen- 
tleman from New^ York were its anointed high 
priests, grants were made to the States of Ala- 
bama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississipi)i and Ar- 
kansas, luulcr the name of •-swamp lands," 
amounting to more than thirty million acres, 
and which are to-day the very richest lands iu 
America. These lands were chiefly bought up 
afterwards by the men wl)o are now conspicu- 
ous rebels, and many of them traitors in arms 
against us. 

The gentleman from New York argues that if 
we seize these lands and parcel them out among 
our soldiers it will hinder the restoration of the 
Union. Sir, I am utterly at a loss to know how^ 
this can be true. I apprehend, however, that 
when he talks about restoring the Union he 
means one thing, and I mean exactly the oppo- 
site, lie means the Union as it was when the 
slave power ruled the country like a throned 
monarch, and when Davis. Floyd, Thompson, 
and tJieir confederate cut throats and pirates 
were in the cabinet, in Congress, representing 
us at the courts of the Old World, and ruling 
the Government according to their own free 
will. 

Mr. Kalbfleisch. I would ask the gentle- 
man whetlicr he means James Buchanan when 
he talks of ''old Jimmy Buchanan?" 

Mr. Julian, I think the gentleman can guess 
my meaning pretty shrewdly if be will remem- 



28 



bor that I ftroupfd him witli Floyd aticl Thomp- 
son, his lii.^tinguislK'd Cabinet ministers, and 
brolhei-s beloved in the work of undermining,' 
tlie Union. I called him "old, linunv Buchan-in" 
I'.imiliarly, not dreaming that it would ollend 
any loyal man on this floor. 

I was about to say, Mr. Speaker, when inter- 
rnfjted, that if the gentleman from New York 
demands tlie restoration of the Union as it was 
when the Demoeratie party, in the evil davs of 
the past, ruled the Government absolutidy in 
the interest of slavery, and when the nation 
was steadily gravitatins; under the accumula- 
ting weight of its guilt toward the botto,niess 
pit of national ruin, then I am not for the Union 
as it was, but as it will be when this reliellion 
shall have wrought out its providential lesson 
in these States, and scourged the ilave-brecd- 
ing Democracy forever from our land. I am 
for a Union of regenerated States, resting 
xipon the basis of free labor and the rights of 
man, and disowning, as an atrocious libel upon 
humanity and republicanism, the dogma which 
demands that slavery shall be the corner-stone 
of the Government, as those rebels and their 
sympathizers have labored so long to make it. 

Mr. Si)eaker, the gentleman from New York 
8ays that it would be 'unconstitutional' to pass 
this bill. I am again at a loss to know what the 
gentleman means by his argument. If it be 
unconstitutional to pass this bill, then all the 
legislation of Congress since this rebellion be- 
gun is unconstitutional and void. Our tax 
laws and revenue laws, enacted during the past 
three years, are all unconstitutional, including 
the tax bill which recently passed this House. 
If this bill is unconstitutional, then our grand 
armies that have from time to time been raised 
by authority of the Government were uncon- 
stitutionally raised, equipped, and employed. 
Every gun and every cannon fired in the na- 
tional defense has been imconstitutionally lev- 
eled at the rebels. The war itself is an uncon- 
stitutional war, the President and Congress are 
guilty of usurpation and treason, and the most 
loyal men in the country are such as the con- 
victed felon wlio once held a seat on this floor 
from the State of Ohio, and is now in exile, 
and the still more "unworthy" gentleman from 
Maryland, [Mr. Harris,] who prays God to-dav 
that the armies of the Union mav never prevail 
over the organized thugs and assassins whose 
daggers are aimed at the nation's heart. Ac- 
cording to this philosophy the Constitution 
itself is clearly unconstitutional, and tliere is no 
sure guide left us save the new gospel of peace 
as expounded by the distinguished gentleman 
from New York. 

Sir, I do not exactly accept those Democratic 
revelations, and I say again that if this bill, 
which we propose to vote upon to-dav, is un- 
constitutional, then all the endeavors of this 
Government to put down the rebellion are un- 
constitutional, the gentlemen on the other side 
of the TIou«o are on the loyal side, we who sup- 
i)ort tlic Government are the enemies of the 
country, and as the remedy for all our troubles, 
the adniinistralion should be utterly overthrown 
and George B. McChdlan chosen President. 
Our h(?aven should be slavery, and the devil 
ffhoiild be our God. Mr. Speaker, I respectfully 
decline the espousal of this unsavory Demo- 
cratic^ faith. 

But the gentlem-in from New Y'ork says ho 
suspected, when this bill was introduced, that 
there was a "nigger" in it, and that upon inves- 
tigation he has found him. lie refers to the Ne- 
braska bill, of which Colonel Benton said ithad 
u stump speech iu its belly, and says that this 



bill has a "little nigger'^ in its belly. The con- 
temptuous si)iritand characteristic language of 
the gentleman from New York would commend 
him to tiie kindly consid(;ration of the hero of 
the Fort Pillow l)utchcries, or the ringleaders of 
the late pro-slavery mob in New York. General 
Forrest in his recent exploits, only displayed a 
larger measure of the same unchristian and un- 
manly hatred of "the nigger,"which the gentle- 
man from New Y''ork exhibits on this floor as a 
leader of the "i)eace Democracy !" Is it strange 
that the rebels of the South should defy human- 
ity in their treatment of the negroes? But, 
Mr. Speaker, why is the gentleman unwilling 
that negro soldiers shall have a homestead on 
their native soil? They have enlisted in the ser- 
vice of their country; they are sharing all the 
perils and hardships of war; they are helping 
by their valor to achieve our victories and save 
the nation from impending destruction; they 
are to-day covering themselves with glory un- 
der General Grant, in driving back General Lee 
and his legions. The country now pays them 
the same wages as our white soldiers. Why 
would the gentleman from New Y'ork refuse to 
grant them, at the end of tlie war, a home on 
the land of their op])resssors, who have en- 
slaved their race for more than two hundred 
years, and at last sought both their lives and 
the life of the Republic? 

IMr. Mallory. I wish, with the permission 
of the gentleman from Indiana, in connection 
with the remark he has just made, to inquire of 
him, if he will be kind enough to answer, 
whether it is not one of the provisions of this 
bill that the negro soldier may go and settle 
alongside of the white soldiers upon these confis- 
cated lands in the rebel States, and other lands 
which may come into possession of the General 
Government? If that be so, then I wish to ask 
the gentleman whether he docs not intend this 
as one of a series of acts by which he desires to 
work out the entire equality, social and politi- 
cal, of the uegro with the white man in this 
country? 

I desire also, in addition, before the gentle- 
man replies to that (luestion, to ask him 
whether he does not himself believe that if the 
negro is employed as a soldier in the Army un- 
der the policy inaugurated by this Government 
to maintain its liberties, as he says— I say 
whether he does not himself believe it to be 
wrcng and unjust for the black soldier wlio 
served his country on the battle-field to be de- 
nied social and political equality with the white 
soldier? I desire to know the opinion of the 
gentleman particularly as ivprcsenling the pe- 
culiar portion of the party on that side of the 
House with which he acts. 

Mr. Juf>iAN. I take pleasiu-e in answering 
the gentleman, but when he speaks of the "i>e^ 
culiar portion" of the party with which I act I 
do not know what he means. 

Mr. Mai.lory. I suppose; the gentleman will 
allow us to be as familiar with his party as he 
assumes to be wdth the Democratic party when 
he speaks of "Jimmy Buchanan." The'gcntle- 
nian of course understands his position on that 
side of the House. 

Mr. Juf.iAM. I trust the gentleman will iind 
when the vote comes to be taken on this bill 
that I am identified with no "peculiar party" 
on this side of the House which sei)aratrs ine 
from the <o'eat body of the uncondition;'.! 
Unicm men in this Hall or throughout the coun- 
try, I ralher think the gentleman is right in 
Ills remark that I understand my political posi- 
tion . 

In answer to the question of the gentleman 



29 



from Knntucky I liave to sav tliat I mean by 
this bill precisely what the bill says in its plain 
English words. I mean that when this war is 
over the black soldier, as Avell as the white sol- 
dier shall have a homestead of forty or eighty 
acres, as the bill provides, upon the lands of 
these rebels which shall be contlscated or other- 
wise come into the possession of tlie Govern- 
ment. I mean, in other words, that they shall 
have equality of rights as to the ownership of 
the soil in these insurrectionary States. 

As to the question ot social equality, I be- 
lieve the negro will work out that problem for 
himself under the new dispensation which the 
military anfl legislative power of the Govern- 
ment are now inaugurating. I do not propose 
to enter into any nice speculations upon this 
subject, but I have no opinion to conceal. 1 be- 
lieve in doing justice to the negro, in guarding 
his rights, and in giving him fair play in light- 
ing his own battle, leaving his social position to 
be determined by liisown conduct, and the con- 
ditions of life in" which he may be placed. For 
one I have no fear whatever of African dom- 
ination. I trust the gentleman from Kentucky 
is not seriously alarmed. I must say, however, 
tJiat I hope no rebels or rebel sympathizers will 
ever have any superiority of rights over the 
negro soldiers who have aided in crushing the 
rebellion. Should African domination take 
its turn, I trust it will lind its true subjects. 

Mr. Mallory. As the gentleman from In- 
diana is very candid and distinct in his utter- 
ances and the expression of his opinions, I do 
not think he will object if I endeavor to under- 
stand exactly where he stands on this question 
before this colloquy is ended. I distinctly ask 
the gentleman whether he does not contemplate 
by the bill before the House, by which he propo- 
ses to put negroes alongside of white men upon 
these confiscated lands, to establish a perfect 
equality of the negro with the white man; in 
other words whether he does not advocate that 
the negro shall vote and hold office, and be fully 
the white man's equal? I understand the gcii- 
tleman to acknowledge that to be true. I un- 
derstand him in his answer to avow that he is 
willing that politically the negro and white man 
sliall be ef|ual, but that as to social equality that 
was a matter which the negro would settle for 
himself as soon as the shackles of bondage 
were removed. I understand that to be the 
answer of the gentleman from Indiana. If not, 
I hope the gentleman will be explicit. 

jNIr. Julian. I think I have answered the 
gentleman fully. I will say in reference to the 
right of the negro to vote 

Mr. Mallouy. And hold cfHce. 

Mr. Julian. I will say that under the Con- 
stitution of our Government, which I hope to 
see preserved, as does the gentleman from Ken- 
tucky—the right of sufl'rage in the States is to 
be determined by the States themselves. When 
these revolted reunons shall be regenerated and 
dotted over with free homesteads, tilled by the 
labor of freemen, and when these negroes have 
been converted from chattels into men, with a 
common right to the soil and stake in society, 
then the legislative bodies of these rebaptized 
States will probably deal with the question of 
suffrage on just principles. I think they will 
not decline the logic^al consequences of radical 
democracy. But I shall be for leaving that 
matter tothem,as it is now left to Massachusetts 
and Kentucky. If they shall see fit to recognize 
the right of the negro "to cast his ballot; if the 
right of voting is conferred upon all without 
discrimination as to color or race, I can only say 
that I would not pronounce it au unwise policy. 



But I would submit that question to the States 
themselves. I believe the States of North Care- 
Una and Tennessee once allowed negroes to vote; 
and the gentleman will remember that not very 
many years ago two very prominent public 
men of those States, Hon. George E. Badger and 
Hon. John Bell, admitted that thev had been 
elected to otlice over their competitors by the 
votes of colored men. The case of Mr, Bell, I 
think, was his first election to Congress. 

The gentleman will also remember that sev- 
eral of the slave States, and nearly all the non- 
slave-holding States, permitted colored men to 
vote at the date of the formation of the Gov- 
ernment; and they did vote, as he must know, 
upon the question of adopting the Constitu- 
tion. 

Mr. Mallory, I think I have obtained an 
answer from the gentleman from Indiana, and 
I want to show what I understand that answer 
to be, so that there may be no mistake in the 
future. I understand him to say that these 
States may extend to this black population who 
settle upon these lauds the right of suUVnge and 
the right to hold office. I understand the gen- 
tleman to say that while as a citizen of Indiana, 
or Representative from that State, he has no 
control over the matter, yet if he had any con- 
trol over the matter his vote and voice would 
be in favor of the exercise of the right of suff- 
rage and to hold political otlice by the black 
men in the revolted States, I understand the 
gentleman to say if lands in Indiana be confis- 
cated—and I believe it is alleged there are men 
there whose property may be confiscated— and 
these black men are located upon them, he will. 
as a potential member of the Kepul)lican party," 
advocate the enjoyment of the elective fran- 
chise by black men, of the political equality of 
the negro with the v.hite man. That I un- 
derstand to be the exact object and aim of this 
bill, I ask whether it is not the entering wed"e 
for the purposes I have indicated, "^ 

Mr. Julian. I fear I shall not be able to 
satisfy the geni Ionian's remarkable thirst for 
knowledge, and for exact information as to the 
ulterior purposes of this bill and my own in- 
tentions in urging its passage. If the bill, by a 
fair interpretation of its language, is a good or.e 
and should command the gentleman's support, 
I hope he will not fight it because he fears it 
will be "the entering wedge" to revolutionary 
measures, or that my own intentions reach too 
far into the distant and uncertain future, I 
hope he will calm his fears. As to rebel lands 
in Indiana, the gentleman knows, if he has read 
the bill, that it applies oulv to the States in in- 
surrection. As regards his reiterated questions, 
let me remind tlie gentleman that if he will re- 
member the answers I have already given him 
he will find that they respond fuliv and fairly 
to what he asks. As respects the question of 
••negro equality," let me say to the gentleman 
that I do not think he ought to press it. consid- 
ering his relations to his brethren in the Soutli. 
I think tlie subject a somewhat delicate one for 
Democratic gentlemen to deal with, 

Mr. MALLOiiY. I would like to have the gen- 
tleman explain that. 

Mr. Julian. I will do so. We who are 
known as Ilepublicans and unconditional Union 
men sometimes associate with negroes. They 
live among us, and of course we have dealings 
with them. But no such intimate relations 
exists between them aiul us as vre find existino- 
between them and the Democrats South. Con*^ 
tinually, habitually, and as the result of a weil- 
recognized law of social order, the slave 
mothers and slave masters of the South are 



BO 



brought on the level of social equality in its 
moi't loathsome forms. In some of tlie reliel 
States I believe the number of mulattoes is nearly 
equal to the number of Democratic voters. In 
the State of Mississippi, if I am not mistalcen, 
wherever you find an orthodox modern Demo- 
crat you will lind a mulatto not very far off. 
The gentleman cannot deny this form of social 
equality, unless he can show tliat llicse niulat- 
toes sprouted up from the soil, or were rained 
down from the clouds, or reported their pres- 
ence throu^irh some other miracle. The social 
equality between negro women and Anglo Sax- 
on Dernocrats is the natural consequciice aiul 
necessary fruit of the institution which has 
proved itself to be the mother of treason and of 
all lesser abominations. 

Mr. Mali.ouy. The Census Bureaxi estab- 
lishes the fact that one-sixth of the colored popu- 
lation of the Kortli liave white blood in their 
A'eins, while only one-ninth of the slave popula- 
tion have white blood in them. 

Mr. Julian. I have not examined the census 
tables as to the fact stated by the gentleman. 
It may be true, for I believe mulattoes more 
generally come into the northern States, than 
those of a darker color, and of course their in- 
crease will be mulattoes. The gentleman is not 
at all relieved, however, by the white blood in 
the veins of these negroes lu the North, for 
they have migrated from the South, bringing 
with them, perhaps the blood of the gentle- 
man from Kentucky, and other distinguished 
leaders ot his party. [Laughter.] 

Mr. Mallory. "I have to say that the one- 
ninth white blood which exists in the South 
may be attributed to the fact that we have 
among us northern teachers, schoolmasters, and 
peddlers. [Laughter.] 

Mr. Julian. The gentleman assigns entirely 
too large a work to these itinerant Yankees. 
Certainly, my friend from Kentucky does not 
believe them to be so wonderfully endowed, or 
so marvelously successful over able and experi- 
enced Democratic rivals. Besides, I think it 
was John Randolph who said that "the best 
blood of old Virginia courses in the veins other 
slaves." It was not the blood of northern 
schoolmasters and peddlers, but Virginia blood, 
and what is true of Virj^inia may fairly be as- 
gumed as to other slave States. 

3fr. Mallory. Mr. Speaker 

Mr. Julian. I prefer not to be further inter- 
rupted in this direction. 3Iy time is rapidly 
expiring. 

Mr. Mallory. I wish the gentleman to an- 
swer my serious question, and not act the dema- 
gogue upon this occasion. 

Mr. Julian. The getitleman imputes to me 
that which I think belongs exclusively to 
himself on this occasion. 

]Mr. Mallory. The gentleman is mistaken. 

Mr. Julian. I decline to yield further. 
"When interrupted by the gentlen'ian from Ken- 
tucky, I was replying to some of the objections 
of tlie gentleman from New York, [IVIr. Fer- 
nando Wood,] to this bill. After urging its un- 
constitutionality, he said he did not seek to save 
the negroes from their masters, but from their 
white northern oppressors. 

Mr. Fernando "Wood. Before the gentle- 
man from Indiana leaves the point of replying 
to me, I desire to call his attention to the fact 
that my objection waste conferring these home- 
steads upon the black laborers, and not upon 
the black soldiers. The gentleman has carefully 
avoided alludinic to that provision of the bill 
which allows laborers to enjoy these homesteads 
and not the soldiers. 



Mr. Julian. I have no disposition whatever 
to evade the fact that this bill ])rovides home- 
steads of forty acres for those who have been 
employed as laborers in the military service. 
But I wish to ask the gentleman from New 
York if he is in favor of conferring these lands 
as homesteads upon the black soldiers. 

Mr. Fernando Wood. I am not, [laughter.] 
because the lands do not belong to the Govern- 
ment, and hence they cannot confer them. 

Mr. Julian. Then I have not misrepresented 
the gentleman, and he had no occasion to inter- 
rupt me. As respects the inhumanity of our 
loyal people toward the freedmen of the South 
I agree with him in all he has said; and one of 
the chief purposes of this measure is to prevent 
the establishment of a remorseless system of 
serfdom over the blacks. I know very well 
what is being done in Louisiana to-day under 
false ideas of reconstruction. I know that a 
system of enforced and uncompensated lat)or is 
growing up there but one remove from slavery 
itself. It is to guard against all this legalized 
vassalage and wrong by' the white speculators of 
the North and the monopolists of the South that 
I desire to see this bill become a law. 

Give away these lands in small homesteads to 
the men who have earned them l)y their heroism 
and their toils; for without a home no man can 
have, absolutely, any rights. Land monopoly 
IS slavery in disguise. It is a stupendous sys- 
tem of serfdom, as unnatural in a republic as 
would be the recognition of universal liberty in 
an absolute despotism. 

I have already referred to the vast estates of 
Floyd, Thompson, and other leading rebels, who, 
with their confederates own the great body of 
the lands in the rebel States. If you seize these 
lands and allot them in small homesteads, you 
destroy this monopoly and establish indepen- 
dence, liberty, and equality on the ruins of the 
system which lias ripened into this war. You 
establish closely associated communities on 
the basis of free labor. You make it possible to 
establish free schools and churches, and by 
taking awa}- the absolute power of capital over 
labor you secure the right to the ballot, and thus 
enal)le the people themselves to guard their 
political rights. Sir. this question of land mo- 
nopoly is the grandest question of this tremend- 
ous conflict with the rebels. It involves the 
whole problem of reconstruction. If not de- 
cided wisely, what wull the President's procla- 
mation be worth ? Of what avail would be an 
act of Congress totally abolishing slavery, or an 
amendment of the Constitution forever prohibit- 
ing it, if the old agricultural basis of aristocratic 
power shall remain? Real liberty must ever be 
an outlaw where one man only in three hundred 
or five hundred is an owner of the soil. Let it 
be remembered, too, that the work of settle- 
ment and reorganization in the revolted States 
must necessarily be attended by tumult and 
peril. Guerrillas will infest the country, and 
perhaps carry on their work of rapine and mur- 
der for years to come. Order and security can 
only approach their final empire by gradual 
steps. Nothing, therefore, can be more entirely 
natural and just than to send our veteran sol- 
diers into these regions when the war is ended, 
with their rifles on their shoulders, ready to de- 
fend as well as to cultivate their homesteads, and 
protect from wrong and outrage those who may 
not be able to help themselves. This policy 
would make every settler in these regions, dur- 
ing their transition from barbarism to civiliza- 
tion, a national policeman and avenger, an effi- 
cient arm of that military force which for a 
time will be required by the state of the coun- 



31 



try. Both a military and an agricultural neces- 
sity plead for it, while it is commended by the 
highest statesmanship, and erai^odies a beautiful 
poetic justice to our own soldiers and to the rebels 
whose lands shall thus become their righteous 
heritage. 

Mr. Speaker, let me say in conclusion, to the 
gentlemen on the other side of the House who 
have seemed so anxious to increase the pay of 
our soldiers that this bill gi^es them a capital 
opportunity to demonstrate their sincerity. 
My colleague, [Mr. Holman,] who I am 
sorry to say, is not now in his scat, has 
clamored during the whole of this 
session for an increased compensation for the 
brave fellows who are pei'illing their lives for 
the Republic. The gentleman from New York 
[Mr. Fernando WoodJ has also been very anxi- 
ous on the subject. It seems to be the earnest 
desire of our brethren on the other side of the 
House to have something done and that speedily 
for the common soldier. We have already in- 
creased hispay, but our Democratic friends are 
not yet satisfied. Now, here is a proposition, 
made by a committee of the House, to give all 
our sailors and soldiers, black or white, and all 
who have served the United States as laborers, 
homesteads of forty and eighty acres of land on 
the forfeited estates of the rebels. This is pro- 
posed as a reward for their valor, and as the 
surest pledge of the redemption and regenera- 
tion of the insurrectionaiy districts. Sir, I 
want to know how these gentlemen are going 
to reconcile their votes against this bill with 
their declared love for the soldiers of the Union ? 

It is a simple proposition to parcel out the 



lands of the rebels by extending the homestead 
law over them under the regulations of the Gen- 
eral Land Office, and in pursuance of existing 
laws of Congress on the subject of confiscation 
and revenue. It is a proposition to make etlect- 
ive, for the benefit of the soldier, what Congress 
has already done, and it will at once test the sin- 
cerity of every man who professes to be the sol- 
dier's friend. I submit to gentlemen upon the 
other side of the House that now is the favored 
opportunitv, the accepted time, lor them to show 
their faith by tbeir works. Not to vote for this 
bill, it seems to me, is to vote to continue the 
immense monojioly of the soil in the revolted 
States without which this rebellion w^ould have 
been impossible. Not to vote for this bill is to 
vote that northern speculators and monopolists 
shall continue to buy up the lands every day 
sold by the Government for the non-payment of 
taxes, and thus make them the basis of new 
and frightful monopolies. Not to vote for this 
bill is to wu-ite one's self down the enemy of 
the common soldier, Avhose valor has covered 
him with glory on so many bloody fields, and 
earned for hiin so richly the gratitude of his 
country. Not to vote for this bill is to balk 
the righteoiis purpose of the nation to save its 
own life, and to visit a fitting retribution upoa 
its assassins. 

Mr. Speaker, I shall not detain the House lon- 
ger, having already occupied more time than I 
intended. I think the principles of this bill are 
understood on both sides of the House, and I 
now demand the previous ciuestion ou its pass- 
age. 



Jtadicalisni and Conservatism — the Truth of Jlistory Vindicated. 



sipeech: OIF- 

Hon. GEOEGE ^. JULIAN, 

Ix THE HOUSE OF KEPRESENTATIVES, Februaky 7th, 18C5. 



Tho House being in the Committee of the Whole 
on tlie 8t:ite of the Union, and having under 
considerutiou the Tresideufs mcs-siige — 

Mr. Julian said : 

Mr. Chairman: Pcriiaps no task could be 
more instruetivo or profitable, in these culmina- 
ting days of the rebellion, than a review of the 
shifting" phases of thouglit and policy which 
have guided the Administration in its endeavors 
to crush it. Sucli a retros))eet will help us to 
vindicate the real truth of history, both as to 
measures and men. It will bring out, in the 
strongest colors, tho contrast between radical- 
ism and conservatism, as rival political forces, 
e;ich maintaining a varying control over the 
conduct of the war. It will, at the same time, 
point out and emphasize those pregnant lessons 
of tlie struggle which may best supply the 
Government with counsel in its further i)rose- 
cutiou. The faithful performance of this task 
demands plainness of speech; and I shall not 
shrink from my accustomed use of it, in the in- 
terests of truth and freedom. 

At the beginning of this war, Mr. Chairman, 
neither of the parties to it comprehended its 
character and magnitude. Its actual history 
has been an immeasurable s^u-prise to both, and 
to the whole civilized world. The rebels evi- 
dently expected to make short work of it. 
Judging us by oar habitual and long-continued 
submission to Southern domination, and con- 
fiding in the nuiltiplied assurances of sympathy 
and help whicii they had received from tlicir 
faithful allies in the North, they regarded the 
work of dismemberment as neither difficult nor 
expensive. They did not dnniin of the grand 
results which have proceeded from their mad 
enterprise. Nor does their d(!lusion seem to 
have been at all strange or unnatural. Cer- 
tainly, it was not more remark-able tliaTi the in- 
fatuation of the Administration, and its con- 
servative friends. The Government understood 
the conflict as little, and misunderstood it as 
absolutely, as its foes. This, sir, is one of the 
lessons of the war which I think it worth while 
to have remem])ered. This revolt, it was be- 
lieved, was simply a new and enlarged edition 
of Southern bluster. The Government did not 
realize tlu' inexorable necessity of actnal war, 
because it lacked the moral visit n to perceive 
tne real nature of the contest. To every sug- 
gestion of so dire an event it turned an averted 
face and a deaf ear. It ho])(Hl to restore order 
by making a show of war, without actually call- 
ing into play the terri!)lc enginery of waV. It 
trusted in the form, without tlie power of war, 
just as some people have trusted in the form, 
without the power of godline-s. It will be re- 
membered that just before the battle of r>all's 
Blufl" General McClellcn ordered Colonel Stone 



to "make a slight demonstration against t!.o 
rebels," which might " have the effect to drivo 
them from Leesburg." The Government seems 
to have pursued a like poli(;y in dealing with 
the rebellion itself. " A slight demonstration," 
it was believed, Avould '• have the eflect" to ar- 
rest the rebels in their madness, and re-estab- 
lish order and peace in about "sixty days," 
without allowing them to be seriously hurt, and 
without imchaining the tiger of war at all. The 
philosophy of General Patterson, who kindly 
advised that the war on our part should be 
'* conducted on peace i)rinciples," was by no 
means out of fashion with our rulers, and thu 
conservative leaders of opinion generally. — 
Even the Commander-in-Chief of our Army 
and Navy scoutiid the idea of putting down tho 
rebellion by military power. He thouu'^iit the 
country was to be saved by giving up the prin- 
ciples it had fairly won by' the ballot in the year 
1801), and to the maintenance of which the new 
Administratiou was solemnly pledged. He be- 
lieved in "conciliation," in "compromise" — 
the meanest word in the whole vocabulary of 
our politics, except, i)erhaps. the word "con- 
ser rativc"— and had far less faith in the help of 
bullets and bayonets in managing the rebels 
than in the power of our brotherly love to melt 
their susceptible hearts, and woo them Itack, 
gently and lovingly, to a sense of their tnadness 
and tlieir crime. Our distinguished Secretary 
of State declared that " none but a despotic or 
imperial (rovernmcnt would seek to subjugate 
thoroughly disaflected sovereignties." The pol- 
icy of coercing the revolted States was disa- 
vowed by the Pn^sident himself in his messago 
to Congress of July, 18ti1. 

Nor "did the legislative department of the 
Government, at that time, disagree with tha 
executive. On the 22d day of July of the. same 
year — and I say it with sorrow and shame— on 
the v('ry mornV.g following the first battle of 
Bull Run, the House of Representatives, speak- 
ing in the form ijf solemn legislative resolves, as 
did the Sentite two days later, declared that it 
was not the purpose' of the Government to 
"subjugate" the villains who began this work 
of organized and inexcusable rapine and nuir- 
der. "indeed, it was not then the fashion to 
call them villains. In the very i)olite and gin- 
gerly phrase of the times they were styled 
" our misguided fellow-citizens," and "'o\u' er- 
ring Soutiiern brethien." while the rebel States 
themselves were lovingly referred to as " our 
wayward sisters." Tiie truth is, that for about 
a yc^u' and a half of this war the poli(;y of ten- 
derness to the rebels so swayed the Administra- 
tion that it seemed far less intent upon crush- 
ing the rebellion by arms, than upon contriving 
" iiow not to do it." General ilcClellan. who 
so long palsied the cuergies and balked tho 



purpose of tlie nation, would not allow an un- 
kind word to be uttered in liis presence against 
tbe rebel leaders. If an officer or soldier was 
beard to speak disrespectfully of tbe great con- 
federate cbief, he was suir,marily reprimanded, 
wbile the unrivaled reprobate and grandest of 
national cut-throats was pronounced a bigh- 
souled gentleman and man of honor! Not the 
spirit ol war, but the spirit of peace, seemed to 
dictate our principles of action and measures 
of policy towards the men who bad resolved, at 
whatever hazard or sacrifice, to break up the 
Government by force. This policy, sir, had it 
been continued, would haxe proved the certain 
triumph of the rebel cause. With grand armies 
in the field, and all the costl.y machinery of war 
in our hnnds, our o]iportunities were sinned 
away by inactivity and delay, while the rebels 
gathered strength from our indecision and 
weakness. A major general in our army, and 
as brave and patriotic a man as lives, saiil to 
me in the early stages of the war that the grand 
obstacle to our success was the lack oi resent- 
ment on our ])art toward traitors. He said wc 
did not adequately hate them; and he tirged me, 
if in any degree in my power, to breathe into 
the hearts of the people in the loyal States a 
spirit of righteous indignation and wrath to- 
ward the rebels commensurate with the un- 
matched enormity of their deeds. This spirit, 
Mr. Chairman, was a military necessity. The 
absence of it furnishes the best explanation of 
our failure during tbe period referred to, while 
its acceptance by the Government inaugurated 
the new policy which has ever since been giving 
us victories. 

That this sickly policy of an inoffensive war 
has nattu-ally prolonged the struggle, and 
greatly augmented its cost in blood and treas- 
ure, no one can doubt. Tbat it belongs, with 
its entire legacy of frightful results, exclu- 
sively to the conservative element in our poli- 
tics, which at first ruled the Government, is 
equally certain. The radical men saw at first, 
a.s clearly as they see to-daj', tbe character and 
spirit of this rebel revolt^ The massacre at 
Fort Pillow, the starvation of our soldiers at 
Ilic.hmond, and the whole black catalogue of 
rebel atrocities, have only been so many veri- 
fied predictions of the men who had studied the 
institution of slavery, and who regarded the 
rebellion as the natural fruit and culmination 
of its Christless career. And hence it was that 
in the very beginning of the war, radical men 
were in favor of its vigorous prosecution . They 
knew the foe with whom we had to wresi le. In 
language employed on thisfloor more than three 
years ago, they knew that "sooner than fail in 
their purpose the rebels would light up heaven 
itself with the red glare of the pit, and convert 
the earth into a carnival of devils." They 
knew that " every weapon in the armory of 
war must be grasped, and every arrow in our 
quiver sped toward the heart of a rebel." They 
knew that " all tenderness to such a foe Is 
treason to our cause, murder to our people, 
faithlessness to the grandest and holiest trust 
ever committed to a' free people." They knew 
that '' the war should be made just as terrific to 
the rebels as possible, consistently with the 
laws of war, not as a work of vengeance, but of 
mercy, and tlie surest means of our triumph," 
They" knew that in struggling with such a foe 
we were shut up to one grand and inevitable 
necessity and duty, and tbat was entire and 
absolute snhjiif/ation. All this was avowed and 
insisted upon by the earnest men who under- 
stood the nature of the conflict, and as persist- 



ently disavowed and repudiated by tbe Govern 
ment and its conservative advisers. 

But a lime came wbeii its lessons had to be 
unlearned. In tbe school of trial it was forced 
to admit that war does not mean peace, but 
exactly the oppo.-ite of peace. Slowly, and step 
by step, it yielded up its theories and brought 
itself face to face with the stern facts of the 
crisis. Tbe Government no longer gets fright- 
ened at tbe word subjugate, because of its 
liberal etymolegy, but is manfully and success- 
fully endeavoring' to place the yoke of the Con- 
stitution upon tbe unbaptised necks of the 
scoundrels who huxe tlirown it otf. The war is 
now recognized as a struggle of numliers, of 
desperate pbysical violence, ^to be fought out to 
the l>itter eml, without stopping to count its 
cost in money or in lilood. Both the people 
and our armies, under this new dispensation, 
have been learning how to bate rebels as Chris- 
tian patriots ought to have done from the begin- 
ning. They have been learning how to hate 
rebel sympathizers also, and to brand them as 
even meaner than rebels outright. They re- 
gard the open-throated traitor, who stakes his 
life, his property, his all, upon tbe success of 
his conspiracy against the Constitution and the 
rights of man, as a more tolerable character 
than the skulking miscreant wlio in his heart 
A\ islies the rebellion God-speed, wbile masquer- 
ading in tbe hypocritical disguise of loyalty. 
Had the Government been animated by a like 
spirit at the beginning of the outbreak, practi- 
cally accepting the truth that there can be no 
middle ground between treason and loyalty, 
rebel sympathizers would have given the 
country far less trouble than they have done. 
A little wholesome severity, summarily ad- 
ministered, would have been a most sovereign 
panacea. On this point the people were in ad- 
vance of tbe Administration, and they are to- 
day. Their earnestness has not yet found a 
complete and authoritative expression in the 
action of the Government. A system of retalia- 
tion, which would have been a measure of real 
mercy, has not been adopted. Our cause is not 
wholiy rescued from the control of conservative 
politicians and generals. Much remains to be 
done; but far more, certainly, has already been 
accomi)lisbed. The times of brotherly love 
towards rebels in arms have gone by forever. 
Such men as McClellan, Buell, and "Fitz John 
Porter, are generally out of the way, and men 
who believe in fi/jkiing rebels ai-'e in active 
command. This revolution ui the war policy of 
the Government, as already observed, was "ab- 
solutely necessary to the salvation of our cause; 
and th? country will not soon forget those 
earnest men who at first coinpreheiuled the 
crisis and the duty, and persistently urged a 
vigorous policy, suited to remorseless' andrevo- 
lutionary violence, till the Government felt con- 
strained to embrace it. 

But a vigorous prosecution of the war, Mr. 
Chairman, was not enough. While this strug- 
gle is one of numbers and of violence, it is like- 
wise, and still more emphatically, a war of 
ideas; a conflict between two forms of civiliza- 
tion, each wrestling for tbe mastery of the 
country, No one now pretends to dispute this, 
nor is it easy to understand how any one could 
ever have failed to perceive it. But tbe Gov- 
ernment, in the beginning, did not believe it 
It tried, with all its might, not to believe it, and 
to persuade the world to disbelieve it. It in- 
sisted that the real cause of the war did not 
cause it at all. The rebellion was the work of 
chance; a stupendous accident, leaping into 



34 



life full-grown, without father or mother, with- 
out any disfoverable genesis. It was a huge, 
black, portentous, national riot, which must be 
suppressed, but nobody was to l)e allowed to 
say one word about the causes which produced 
it, or the issues involved in the struggle. Si- 
lence was to be our supreme wisdoui. Hence 
it was that the Government, speaking tluough 
Its higli functionaries, declared that the slavery 
question was not involved in the quarrel, and 
that every slave in Ixindagc would remain in 
exactly the same condition after the war as be- 
fore. Hence it was that, when a celebrated 
proelamatiim was issued, giving freedom to 
slaves of rebels in Missouri, it was revoked by 
the Government in order to please the State of 
Kentucky, and placate the power that began 
the war. Hence, under General Halleck's 
" Order No. 3," which remained in fouu; more 
than a year, the swarms of contrabands who 
came thronging to our lines, tendering us the 
use of their muscles and the secrets of the rebel 
prison-house, were driven away by our com- 
manders. Hence it was that our soldiers were 
compelled to serve as slave-hounds in chasing 
down fugitives and sending them back to rebel 
masters, and that General McClellan, who al- 
ways loved slavery more than he loved his 
country, and who declared he would put down 
slave insurrections "'with an iron hand,"' was 
continued as commander-in-chief of our armies 
long mouths after the country desired to spew 
him out. Hence, likewise, so many thousands 
of our soldiers were compelled to dig and ditch 
in the swamps of the Chiekahominy till the cold 
sweat of death gathered on the handle of the 
spade, while swarms of stalwart negroes, able 
to relieve them and eager to do so, were denied 
the privilege, lest it should otTend the nostrils 
of democratic gentility, and give aid and com- 
fort to the Abolitionists. Hence it was that the 
President, instead of striking at slavery as a 
military necessity, and Avhile rebuking that 
policy in his dealings with Hunter and Fre- 
mont, was at the same time so earnestly espous- 
ing chimerical proiects for the colonization of 
negroes, couplcLl ^\•iththe policy of gradual and 
compensated emancipation, which should take 
place sometime before the year 1900, if the slave- 
holders should be willing. Hence it was that 
very soon after the Administration had been 
installed in power it began to lose sight of the 
principles on which it had triumphed in 18130, 
allowing four-fifths of the offices of the army 
and navy to be held by men of known hostility 
to those principles, while the various depart- 
ments of the Government in this city were 
largely filled by rebel sympathizers. Hence it 
■was that for nearly two" years of this war the 
Government, while smiting the rebels with one 
hand, was with the other guarding the slave 
property and protecting the constitutional rights 
of the men who had renounced the Constitution, 
and ceased to have any rights under it save the 
right to its peiudty against traitors. Hence it 
was that during tlie greater part of this time the 
Administration stood upon the jilatform and 
urged the policy of "the Constitution as it is 
and the Union as it was,'' whicli the nation so 
overwhelming repudiated in the late presiden- 
tial contest. Hence it was finally, that the 
songs of Whittier could not be sung in our 
armies; that slavery Avas everywhere dealt with 
by the Government as the dear cliild of its love; 
and that our rulers seemed, with matchless 
impiety, to hope for the favor of God without 
laying hpld of the conscience of our quarrel, 
aiul by coolly kicking it out of doors! Sir, I 
believe it safe to say that this madness cost the 



nation the precious sacrifice of fifty thousand 
soldiers, who have gone up to the throne of God 
as witnesses against the horrid infatuation that 
so long shaped tlie policy of the Government in 
resisting this slaveholders' rebellion. 

l!ut here, again, Mr. Chairman, the Govern- 
ment had to unlearn its first lessons. Its pur- 
pose to crush the rebellion and spare slavery 
was found to be utterly suicidal to our cause. 
It was a purpose to accomplish a moral impos- 
sibility, and was therefore prosecuted, il not 
conceived, in the interest of the rebels. It was 
an attempt to marry treason and loyalty; for 
the rebellion is slavery, armed with the i)owera 
of war, organized for wholesale schemes of ag- 
gression, and animated by the overfiowing full- 
ness of its infernal genius. The strength of our 
cause lies in its righteousness, and therefore no 
bargain with the" devil could possibly give it 
aid. Through great sutfering and sacrafice, 
individual and national, our rulers learned that 
there is but " one strong thing here below, the 
just thing, the true thing," and that God would 
not allow these severed States to be re-united 
without the abandonment, forever, of our great 
national sin. This was a difiicult lesson, but as 
it was gradually mastered, the Government 
"changed its base." It became disenchanted. 
Congress took the lead in ushering in the new 
dispensation. A new Article of War was en- 
acted, forbidding our armies from returning 
fugitive slaves. Slavery was abolished in the 
District of Columbia, and prohibited in our 
national Territories, where it had been planted 
by the dogma of popular sovereignty and the 
Dred Scott decision. Our Federal judiciary 
was so reorganized as to make sure this anti- 
slavery legislation of Congress. The confisca- 
tion of slaves was provided for, and freedom 
oflered to all who would come over and help us, 
either as laborers or soldiers, thus annulling the 
famous and infamous order of General Halleck, 
already referred to. The fugitive slav e law was 
at first made void as to the slaves of rebels, and 
finally repealed altogether, with the old law of 
179o. The coastwise slave trade, a frii^htful 
system of home piracy, carried on by authority 
of Congress since the year 1807, was totally 
abolished. The right of testimony in our 
Federal courts, and to sue and be sued, was 
conferred upon negroes. Their employment as 
soldiers was at last systematically provided for, 
and their pay at length made the same as tliat 
of white soldiers. The independence of Hayti 
and Liberia was recognized, and new measures 
taken to put an end to the African slave trade. 
In thus wiping out our code of national slave 
laws, acknowledging the manhood of the negro, 
and recognizing slavery as the enemy of oiu: 
peace. Congress emphatically rebuked the policy 
which had sought to ignore "it, and to shield it 
from the destructive hand of the war instigated 
by itself; while it opened the way for furtlier 
and inevitable measures of justice, looking to his 
complete emancipation from tlie dominion of 
Anglo-Saxon prejudice, the repeal of all special 
legislation inteiuled for his injury, and his reso- 
lute restoration to equal rights with the white 
man as a citizen as well as a soldi(>r. 

Meanwhile, the President had been giving 
the subject his sober second thought, and re- 
considering his position at tin* beginning of the 
conflict. Instead of afiirming, as at first, that 
tlie (luestion of slavery was not involved in tlie 
strugirle, he gradually perceived and finally 
admitted that it was at once the cause of the war 
ami tlie obstacle to peace. Instead of resolving 
to save the Union xoith slavery, he finally re- 
solved to save the Union without it, and by its 



35 



destruction. Instead of entertniniug the country 
with projects of gnidual and distant emancipa- 
tion, conditioned upon compensation to the 
master and colonization of the freedmen, lie 
himself linally launched the policj'^ of immediate 
and unconditional liberation. Instead of re- 
coiling from " radical and extreme measures," 
and " a remorseless revolutionary conflict," he 
at last marched up to the full height of tJie 
national emergency, and proclaimed "to all 
whom it may concern," that slavery must 
perish. lustead of a constitutional amendment 
for the purpose of eternizing the institution in 
the Eepublic, indorsed by him in his inaugural 
message, he became the zealous advocate of a 
constitutional amendment aljolishingit forever. 
Instead of committing the fortunes of the war 
to pro-slavery commanders, whose hearts were 
not in the work, he learned how to dispense 
with their services, and find the proper substi- 
tutes. These forward movements were not 
ventured upon hastily, hut after much hesita- 
tion and apparent reluctance. Not suddenly, 
but following great deliberation and many mis- 
givings, he issued his proclamation of freedom. 
Months afterward he doubte i its wisdom; but 
it was a grand step forward, which at once 
served his relations with his old conservative 
friends, and liuked his fortunes thenceforward 
to those of the men of ideas and of progress. 
Going hand in hand with Congress inthe great 
advance measures referred to, or acquiescing in 
their adoption, the whole policy of the Adminis- 
tration has been revolutionized. Abolitionism 
and loyalty are now accepted as convertible 
terms, and so are treason and slavery. Our 
covenant with death is annulled. Ovir national 
partnership with Satan has been dissolved; and 
just in proportion as this has been done, and an 
alliance sought with divine Providence, has the 
cause of our country prospered. In a word, 
Eadicalism has saved our nation from the 
IDolitical damnation and ruin to which conser- 
vatism would certainly have consigned it; 
while the mistakes and failures of the Adminis- 
tration stand confessed in its new policy, which 
alone can vindicate its wisdom, command the 
respect and gratitude of the people, and save it 
from humiliation and disgrace. 

Mr. Chairman, these lessons of the past sug- 
gest the true moral of tliis great conflict, and 
make the way of tlie future jjlain. They de- 
mand a vigorous prosecution of the war by all 
the powers of war, and that the last vestige of 
slavery shall be scourged out of life. Let the 
Administration falter on cither of these points 
and the people will disown its policy. They 
have not chosen the President for another term 
through any secondary or merely personal con- 
siderations. In the presence of so grand an 
issue, men were nothing. They had no faith in 
General McClellan and the party leaders at his 
heels. They had little faith in the early policy 
of Mr. Lincoln, when Democratic ideas ruled 
his Administration, and the power of slavery 
held him in its grasp. Had his appeal to the 
people been made two years earlier, he would 
have been as overv\^helmingly rcpi'diated as he 
has been gloriously indorsed. I^he i)Cople sus- 
tain him now, because of their assured faith 
that he will not hesitate to execute their will. 
In voting for him for a second time, they voted 
for liberating and arming the slaves of the South 
to crush out a slaveholders' rebellion. They 
voted that the Republic shall live, and that 
whatever is necessary to save its life shall be 
done. They voted that slavery shall be eter- 
nally doomed, and further rebellions thus made 
impossible. They voted, not that Abraham Lin- 



coln can save the country, but that they can 
save il , with him as their servant. That is what 
was decided in the late elections. I have par- 
ticipated, somewhat actively, in seven presi- 
dential contests, and I remember none in which 
the element of personal enthusiasm had a 
smaller share than that of last November. One 
grand and overmastering resolve filled the 
hearts and swayed the purposes of the masses 
everywhere, and that was the rescue of the 
country through the defeat of the Chicago plat- 
form and conspirators. In the execution of 
that resolve they lost sight of everything else; 
but should the President now place himself in 
the people's way, by i-eviving the old policy of 
tendesness to the rebels and their beloved insti- 
tution, the loyal men of the country will aban- 
don his policy as decidedly as they have sup- 
ported it generously. They have not approved 
the mistakes either of the leglstive or execu- 
tive department of the Government. Tliey ex- 
pect that Congress will pass a bill for the con- 
fiscation of the fee of rebel landholders, and 
they expect the President will approve it. 
They expect that Congress will provide for 
the reconstruction of the rebel States by syste- 
matic legislation, which shall guarantee re- 
publican governments to each of those States, 
and the complete enfranchisement of the 
negro; and they will not approve, as they 
have not approved of any executive inter- 
ference with the people's will as deliberately 
expressed by Congress. They expect that 
Congress will provide for parceling out the 
forfeited and confiscated lands of rebels in 
small homesteads among the soldiers and 
seamen of the war, as a fit reward for their 
valor, and a security against their ruinous mo- 
nopoly of the soil in the South; and they will 
be disappointed should this great measure fail 
through the default either of Congress or the 
Executive. They demand a system of just re- 
taliation against the rebels for outrages com- 
mitted upon our prisoners; that a policy of 
increasing earnestness and vigor shall prevail 
till the war shall be ended; and that no hope 
of peace shall be whispered, save on condition 
of an absolute and vinconditional surrender to 
our authority; and the Government will only 
prolong the war by standing in the way of these 
demands. This is emphatically the people's 
war; and it will not any longer suffice to say 
that the people are not ready for all necessary- 
measures of success. The people would have 
been ready for such measures from the begin- 
ning, if the Governmedt had lead the way. At 
every stage of the contest they have hailed with 
joy evej y eai-nest man who came forward, and 
every vigorous war measure that has been pro- 
posed. So long as the war was conducted 
under the counsels of conservatives, and in tne 
interests of slavery, the people clamored against 
the Administration; but just so soon as the 
Government entered upon a vigorous policy, and 
pi'oclaimcd war against slavery, the people be- 
gun to shout for the Union and liberty. In the 
ifall of 1SG2, before the Administration was 
divorced from its early policy, the Union party 
was overwhelmed at the polls. Eut we tri 
umphed the next year, and gloriously triumphed 
last year, because the Government yielded to 
the popular demand. The plea often urged that 
the people were not ready, is less a fact than a 
pretext. The men who loved slavery more than 
they loved the Union were never ready for 
radical measures. They are not ready to-day. 
On the other hand, the men who were all the 
while unconditionally for the Union, would 
have sustained the Administration far more 



36 



lieartily in the most thorouuli and swocpinjr 
war nicasuro:*, than they sustained its policy of 
delaying tho^^e measures to the last hour. 

The truth is, the people have stood l)y the 
Government for the sake of the cause, whether 
its policy pleased them or not. Their faith and 
patience have been singularly unllincliing 
throughout the entire struggle, 'i'hev would 
not distrust the Tresident without the slrongest 
reasons. They were ever ready to credit him 
•\vitli good intentions, and to i)resume in favor 
of his superior means of knowledge. "When 
General i'remont was recalled from Missouri, 
and General Eutler from New Orleans, the 
people pocketed their deep disappointment, and 
quietly acquiesced. When General lUiell was 
kej)t in command so long after his ineUiciency 
IkuI been demonstrated and his loyalty cpies- 
tioned, both by the country and tUeinen under 
Jiis conuuaud, the people bore it with uncom- 
raion patience and long-suttering. They dis- 
.-wLaycd the same virtues in the case of General 
•McClelUm, and othor rebel sympathizers, who 
:foK.ud favor Avith the Administration long after 
"* the <r-,ountry would have sent them adrift. Sir, 
this feeling of unconf(uerable respect for our 
choseia rulers, this Anglo-Saxon regard for con- 
etitutetl authority, has been evinced by the 
people through all the phases of the war. Most 
■a.ssure«Uy it would not have been found want- 
ing had .ti:ie Government inaugurated a radical 
jQolicy, instead of a conservative one, during the 
lirst year and a half of the struggle, "The 
people who endured McClellan, and Ikiell, and 
Halleck, would have endured Fremont, and 
Hunter, and Butler. If the conservative Union- 
ists of Kentucky were not ready for the procla- 
mation of freedom to the slaves of JMissouri 
rebels, tliere were millions of people outside of 
-Kentucky who were not ready to have it re- 
voked. I agree that slavery had done much to 
drug the conscience of the country with its in- 
sidious poison. I know that we had so long 
made our bed W'lth slaveholders (hat kicking 
tJiem out was ratiier an awkward business'. 
As brethren, living under a common Govern- 
ment, we had long journeyed together, and our 
habits and traditions naturally took the form 
of obstacles to a just policy in dealing with 
them as rebels and public enemies. It was by 
no means easy at once to recognize them as 
such. All this is granted, and that in the be- 
ginning the country was not prepared for every 
radical measure of legisilation and war now 
being employed by the Government. But it 
was the duty of the Administration to do its 
part in preparing the couctry. Clothed Avitli 
solemn official authority, and intrusted by the 
nation with the sworn duty .of serving it in such 
a crisis, it had no right to become thie foot-ball 
of events. It had no right, at such a time, to 
make itself, a negative expression, or an un- 
known quantity, in the algebra, which was to 
-work out the grand problem. It liad no right 
to take shelter beneath a debauched and sickly 
public sentiment, and plead it in bar of the 
great duty imposed upon it by the crisis. It 
had no right, certainly, to lag behind that sen- 
timent, to magnify its extent and potency, and 
to become its virtual ally, instead of enileavor- 
iug to control it, and to indoctrinate the 
■country with ideas suited to the emergency. 
The power of the Government in molding the 
general opinion and feeling was immense, and 
Its responsibility must be measiu'cd accordingly. 
The revocation of the first anti-slavery procla- 
mation of this war chilled the heart "of every 
earnest loyaiist iu the land, and came like a 
rumpet-call to the pro-slavery hosts to rally 



and stand together. They obeyed it, and ffom 
that event dates the birth of organized copper- 
head democracy. The rebels of the South and 
their sympathizers in the North felt that they 
had gained an ally in the rresident. Had lie 
sustained that measure, would not its moral 
ed'cct have been at least as potent on the other 
side? Had his ollicial name and sanction been 
as often given to Ihe cause of radicalism as 
they were lent to that of pro-slavery conserva- 
tism would not the country have been much 
sooner prei)ared for the saving and only policy? 
If he had said, early iu the struggle^ " to all 
whom it may concern," what he says now, that 
slavery is the nation's enemy, and therefore 
nuist be destroyed, instead of sheltering it 
luider the Constitution and sparing it from the 
hand of war, how grandly could he have 
" organized victory" and multiplied himself 
among the people! Sir, our traditionary re- 
spect fo- slavery and slaveholders was our 
grand peril. It stood up as an imi)assible 
barrier in the way of any siiccessful war for 
the Union. So long as it was allowed to domi- 
nate, it luinerved the arm of the Government 
and deadened tin; spirit of the people. It made 
the Old World our enemy, and threatened us 
with foreign war. The mission of the Govern- 
ment was not to make this feeling stronger by 
defeiTing to it, or to dloom the country to a 
prolonged war and deplorable sacrifices as the 
best means of teaching the peojde the truth. 
No. The coiuitry needed a speedy exodus from 
the bondage of false ideas, and the Government 
should have pointed the way. A frank state- 
ment by it of the real issue of the war, without 
any disposition to cover up the truth; an un- 
mistakable hostility to slavery as the organized 
curse, without which the rebellion would have 
been impossible; and the timely utterance in its 
leading State papers of a few bold and spirit- 
stirring words which might have been "half 
battles," appealing to the courage and manhood 
of the nation, woidd have gone far to educate 
the judgment and conscience of the people, and 
command their enthusiastic espousal of what- 
ever measures would promise most speedily to 
end the struggle and economize its cost in pro- 
perty and life. 

Mr. Chairman, I take no pleasure, certainly, 
in thus freely discussing the policy of the Gov- 
ernment in its endeavors to meet its great re- 
sponsibilities during this war. I have only 
referred to its mistakes as a servant of the 
truth, and in the name of the great cause which 
has been made to sutler. I believe, religiously, 
in the freedom of speech. From the beginning 
of the war I have exercised the right of frank, 
friendly, and fearless criticism of the conduct 
of our rulers, wherever I believed them to have 
been in tiie wrong. I shall continue to exercise 
it to the end; and if I should not, through a,uy 
])ersonal or prudential considerations, I would 
lie unworthy of the seat I have occupied on this 
floor. Criticism has dictated the present policy 
of the Government, and is still a duty. This 
great battle for the rights of man. and the 
actors in it, must be judged. Nr ne of them can 
"escape history." The fame of none of them is 
so i)recious as the truth, and as public justice, 
which cares for the dead as well as the living, 
for the common soldiers slain by thousands, afl 
well as for the general and the statesman. The 
President, his advisers, his commanding gene- 
rals, and the civilians whose shaping hands 
have had so much to do with the conduct of the 
war, must all of them be weighed in the bal- 
ance bj' the people and the generations to come. 
"The great soul of the world is just," and 



37 



sooner or later all disguises will be thrown off, 
and every historical character will stand forth 
as he is, in the light of his deeds and deserts. 
The men who have been intrusted with the 
concerns of the nation in this momentous crisis 
will not he judged harshly. Much will be for- 
given or excused on the score of the surpassing 
magnitude and difficulty of their work. Justice 
will be done; but that justice may brand as a 
crime, the blunders proceeding from a feeble, 
timid, ambidextrous policy, resulting in great 
sacralices of life and treasure, and periling the 
pi'iceless interests at stake. 1 would award all 
due honor to this Administration, and to the 
statesmen and generals who have been faithful 
to their high trusts; but I woidd award an 
equal honor to the rank and file of the people, 
who have inspired its present policy, and to the 
rank and tile of o\u- soldiers, who have saved 
tlie country in spite of the mistakes of the 
Government, the strifes of our i)oliticians, and 
the rivalries of our generals. These are the 
real hi'i-oes of the war. Untitled, practically 
unrewarded, facing everj' form of privation and 
danger, and animated by the purest patriotism, 
the common soldier is not only the true hero of 
the war, but the real saviour of his country. 

But a higher honor, if not a more enduring 
fame, will be the heritage of the anti-slavery 
pioneers and prophets of bur laud; for 

" Peace hath hiorber tests of manhood 
Than battle ever knew." 

Without their heroic labors and sacrifices the 
Republic, " heirs of all the ages," would have 
been the mightiest slave empire of the world. 
In an age of practical atheism and mammon- 
worship, when the Church and the State joined 
hands with slavery as the new trinity of the 
nation's faith, they really believed in God, in 
justice, in the resistless might of the truth. 
They believed that liberty is the birthright of 
all men, and their grand mission was the prac- 
tical vindication of this truth. They believed, 
with their whole hearts, in the Declaration of 
Independence. They accepted its teachings as 
concident with the Gospel of Christ, and sup- 
ported by reason and justice. It was their 
ceaseless " battle-cry of freedom," and they 
chanted it as "the fresh, the matin song of the 
universe," to the enslaved of all races and 
lands. They were branded as fanatics and in- 
fidels, and encountered everywhere the hoot- 
ings of the multitude and the scorn of politi- 
cians and priests; but I know of no class of 
men who were ever more far-sighted, whose 
coinvictions rested on so broad a basis of Chris- 
tian morals and logic, and whose religious trust 
was so strong and so steadfast. For them there 
was no '• eclipse of faith." Just as the nation 
began to lapse from the grand ideas of our re- 
volutionary era, they began to " cry aloud and 
gpare not," and tliey never ceased or slackened 
their labors. Placing their ears to the ground 
in the infancy and weakness of their movement, 
they cauffht the rumbling thunders of civil war 
iu "the distance, warned the country of its 



danger, and preached repentance as the chosen 
and only means of escape. They were compelled 
to face mobs, violence, persecution, and death, 
and were always misunderstood or misrepre- 
sented; but they never faltered. Reputation, 
honors, property, worldly ease, were all freely 
laid upon the altar of duty, in their resolve to 
vindicate the rights of man and the freedom of 
speech. To follow these ai>ostles and martyrs 
was to forsake all the prizes of life which 
worldly prudence or ambition could value or 
covet. It was to take up the heaviest cross yet 
fashioned by this century as the test of Christian 
character and heroism; aiid those who bore it 
were far braver spirits than the men who fight 
our battles on land and sea. 

Mr. Chairman, the failure of men thus de- 
voted to a great aiul holy cause was morally 
impossible. They could not fail. Throu.gh 
their courage, constancy, and faith, they gradu- 
ally seciu'cd the co-operation or sympathy of 
the better type of men of all parties and creeds. 
They seriously disturbed, or broke in pieces, 
the great political and ecclesiastical organiza- 
tions of the land; and even before this war their 
ideas were rapidly taking captive the popular 
heart. When it came, they saw, as by intuition, 
the character of the struggle, as the final phase 
of slaveholding madness and crime, and insisted 
upon the early adoption of that radical policy 
which the Government at last was compelled t'o 
accept. I believe it safe to say that the moral 
appeals and persistent criticism of these men, 
auLl of the far greater numbers who borrowed 
or sympathised with their views, saved our 
cause from the complete control of conserva- 
tism, and thus saved the country itself from 
destruction. Going at once to the heart of our 
great conflict, they pointed out the only remedy, 
and felt compelled to reprobato the "failure of 
the Government to adopt it. They judged its 
!)olicy in war, as they had done in peace, in the 
light of its fidelity or infidelity to human rights. 
By this test they tried every man and party, 
and they need ask for no other rule of judg- 
ment for themselves. The Administration, and 
the chief actors in this drama of war, of whatever 
political school, must be weighed in the sarne 
great balance. fTot even the founders of the 
Repvdjlic will be spared from the trial. In 
their compromise with slavery in the begin- 
ning, which is now seen to have been the germ 
of this horrid conflict, they "swerved from the 
right." Posterity must so pronounce; and the 
record which dims the luster of their great 
names will be read in the flames of this war as 
a warning against all future compacts Avith 
evil. Justice to public men is a certain as that 
truth is omnipotent. It may be delayd for a 
season; it may be hidden from the vision of 
men of little faith; but its final triumph is sure. 
To the world's true heroes and confessors historj- 
ever sends its word of cheer: 

"Thp good can wf41 nfford to wait ; 

Give erinined knaves their hour of crime ; . 
Ye have the future, grand find great, 
The safe appeal of truth to time." 



Suffrage in the District of Columhia, 



sipeeoxh: oih^ 



Hon. GEORGE ^Y. JTJLlAIsr, 

In the house OF EEPRESENTATIVES, Janury ICxn, 1SG6. 



The House having under consideration the 
bill extending the right of suffrage in tlie 
District of Columbia — 
Mr. Julian said: 

Mr. Speaker : "Whatever doubts may arise 
as to the authority of Congress to regulate the 
right of suffrage in the disti-icts lately in re- 
volt, none can exist as to such authority v,dthin 
the District of Columbia. By the express words 
of the Constitution, Congress here has " ex- 
clusive power of legislation ;" and that power, 
of course, extends to all the legitimate sub- 
jects of legislation, of which the ballot is un- 
questionably one. Shall it be conferred, irre- 
spective of color, or granted only to white 
men ? Shall Congress recognize the equal 
rights of all men in the metropolis of the nation 
and the territory under its exclusive control, 
or must our national policy still be inspired 
by that contempt for the negro which caused 
slavery, and finally gave birth to the horrid 
war from which we have just emerged ? Shall 
the nation, through its chosen servants, stand 
by the principle of taxation and representa- 
tion for which our fathers fought in the begin- 
ning, or re-enact its guilty compact with 
aristocracy and caste ? This is the question, 
variously stated, which confronts us in the 
bill before the House. It must now be dealt 
■with upon its merits. To attempt to postpone 
or evade it is to trifle with the dangers and 
duties of the hour, and forget all the terrible 
lessons of the past. 

Mr. Speaker, I demand the ballot for the 
colored men of this District on the broad 
ground of absolute right. I repudiate the 
political philosophy which treats the right of 
suffrage as merely conventional. The right of 
a man to a voice in the Government which 
deals with his liberty, his property, and his 
life, is as natural, as inborn, as any one of 
those enumerated by our fathers. It is said, 
I know, that natural rights are only those 
universal ones which exist in a state of nature, 
in which every man takes his defense and 
protection into his own hands; but I ansvver 
that there is no sucli state of nature, save in 
the dreams of speculative writers. The natu- 
ral state of man is a state of society, which 
demands law, govern incut, as the condition of 
its life. By the right of suffrage I mean the 
right to a share in the governing power; and 
while the peculiar manner and circumstances 



of its exercise may fairly be regarded as con- 
ventional, the right is natural. If not, then 
there are no natural rights, since none could 
be enjoyed except by the favor or grace of the 
Government, which must decide for itself who 
shall be permitted to share in its exercise. 
You may, if you choose, call the right of suf- 
frage a natural social right; but whatever 
adjectives you employ in your delinition, the 
right, I insist, is natural. Most certainly it 
is so in its primary sense. My friend from 
Iowa [Mr. Wilson] substantially agrees with 
me, for he speaks of suffrage, not ns&jiricilege, 
but as a right, equally sacred with those ac- 
knowledged to be natural, and which Govern- 
ment cannot take away. Sir, without the 
ballot no man is really free, because if he 
enjoys freedom it is by i\\Q permission of those 
who govern, and not in virtue of his own 
recognized manhood. We talk about the 
natural right of all men to life, to liberty, and 
to the pursuit of happiness ; but if one race of 
men can rightfully disfranchise another, and 
govern them at will, what becomes of their 
natural rights ? The moment you admit such 
a principle, the very idea of democracy is re- 
nounced, and absolutism must own you as its 
disciple. The fact that society, through Gov- 
ernment as its agent, regulates the right, and 
withholds it in certain instances, as in the 
case of infants and idiots, and makes the 
withdrawal of it a punishment for crime in 
others, docs not at all contravene the ground 
I assume. Society, for its own protection, 
takes away all natural riglits, or rather, it de- 
clares them forfeited on certain prescribed 
conditions. Christianity and civilization place 
their brand upon slavery as a violation of the 
natural rights of men. But that system of 
personal servitude from which we have final- 
ly been delivered is only one type of slavery. 
Serfdom is another. That unnatural owner- 
ship of labor by capital which grinds the toil- 
ing millions of the Old World, and renders 
life itself a curse, is not loss at war with natu- 
ral rights than negro slavery. The degrees 
of slavery may varj', but the real teat of free- 
dom is the right to a share in the governing 
power. Judge Humphrej', speaking of the 
freedmen, says "there is really no difference, 
in my opinion, whether we hold them as 
absolute slaves, or obtain their labor by some 
other method.'"' The old slaveholders under- 



39 



stand this perfectly. An intelligent human 
being, absolutely subject to the Government 
under which he lives, answerable to it in his 
person and property for disobedience, and yet 
denied any political rights whatever, is a 
slave. He may not wear the collar of any 
single owner, but he will be what Carl Schurz 
aptly calls "the slave of society," which is 
often a less merciful tyrant ! He will owe to 
the mere grace of the Government the right 
to marry and rear a family ; the right to sue 
for any grievance ; the right to own a home 
in the wide world ; the right to the means of 
acquiring knowledge ; the right of free loco- 
motion and to pursue his own happiness ; the 
right to a fair day's wages for a fair day's 
work; the right to life itself, save on condi- 
tions to be fixed without his consent, and 
which may render him an alien and an out- 
cast among men. So abject and humiliating 
is such a condition, and so perfectly does the 
world understand the sacredness of the rights 
of the citizen, that in all free Governments 
his disfranchisement is appropriately made a 
part of the punishment for high crimes. Sir, 
I repeat it, theie is no freedom, no security 
against wrong and outrage, save in the ballot; 
and Gov. Brownlow is therefore thoroughly 
right in principle, in contending that the con- 
stitutional amendment abolishing slavery, and 
giving Congress the power, by appropriate 
legislation, to enforce this abolition, author- 
izes us to secure the ballot to all men in the 
revolted districts, iri'espective of color. It is 
not slavery in form, but in ftict, and under 
whatever name, that the people of the United 
States intend to have abolished forever. 

If I am right in this view, color has nothing 
whatever to do with the question of suffrage, 
as the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Kasson] 
will see. The negro should not be disfran- 
chised because he is black, nor the white man 
allowed to vote because he is white. Both 
should have the ballot, because they are men 
and citizens, and require it for their protection. 
Are you willing to rest your right to the bal- 
lot on the purely contingent fact of your 
color ? Your manhood tells you instantly 
that t?iat is not the foundation. Tou are a 
man, endowed with all the rights of a man, 
and therefore 3'ou demand a voice in the 
Government ; but when you say this you as- 
sert the equal rights of the negro. Neither 
color, nor race, nor a certain amount of pro- 
perty,nor any other mere accident of humanity 
can justify one portion of the people in strip- 
ping another portion of their equal rights be- 
fore the law, the common master over all. Gov- 
ernment, in fact, in its proper, American 
sense, is simply the agent and representative 
of the governed, in taking care of their inter- 
ests and guarding their rights. It is not the 
concern of the few, nor the many, but of all. 
The negro, doubtless, would have been born 
white if he could have been consulted ; and 
to take from him his inherent rights as a man 
because of his complexion is a political absur- 
dity as monstrous as its injustice is mean and 
revolting. When you do it, you aim n dead- 



ly stab at the vital principle of all democracy. 
And if you may disfranchise the negro to-day 
on account of his race, or color, j'ou may dis- 
franchise the Irishman to-morrow, and the 
German the next day; and then, perhaps, you 
will be prepared to strike down the laboring 
man, the "mudsill," adopting the Virginia 
philosophy, that " filthy operatives" and 
"greasy mechanics" are unfit for political 
power. Ko absurdity or wickedness can be 
too great for a people who could thus deliber, 
ately sin against the great primal truths of 
democracy ; and the logical consequence of 
the first false step, of any departure whatever 
from the rule which makes manhood alone 
the test of right, must be to continually nar- 
row the basis of popular power till the end 
shall be a remorseless aristocracy or an abso- 
lute despotism. 

Mr. Speaker, this view of suffrage as a nat- 
ural right greatly simplifies the whole subject. 
The sole question is, as already stated, wheth- 
er our democratic theorjr of Government shall 
be maintained in practically recognizing the 
inherent rights of all men as the source and 
basis of political power ? To ask this ques- 
tion in the United States is to answer it. And 
public policy, also, answers the question in the 
interest of the broadest radicalism. Duty and 
advantage will be found hand in hand in any 
fairly tested experiment of equal suflYage. 
According to the census returns of 1860, the 
colored population of this District was then 
over fourteen thousand. It is novv^ estimated 
at about twenty thousand. The value of real 
and pei-sonal property owned by them is at 
least $1, 225, 000. They own twenty-one 
churches, supported at a cost of over §20,000 
per annum. The whole number of their com- 
municants is 4,300, with an average attend- 
ance of 9,000, distributed among their own re- 
ligious communities, and among the Catholic 
and Episcopal churches of their white fellow- 
citizens. They have twenty Sabbath schools, 
with from three to four thousand scholars, and 
thirtj'-threo day schools, attended by over 
four thousand scholars in the month of last 
November. Four thousand of the colored 
people can read and write. They subscribe 
for 1,200 copies of the National Eepublican, 
and about 3,000 copies of the Daily and Sun- 
day Chronicle. There are more than thirty 
benevolent, literarj-, and civic organizations 
among them, by which their needy, superan- 
nuated and infirm are cared for to "a large ex- 
tent, the city government having none or 
very few colored paupers to support. They 
furnished three full regiments for the national 
service, numbering in all 3,549, and from six- 
ty to seventy per cent, of the drafts in the 
District were composed of drafted colored 
soldiers or substitutes. This, sir, is the char- 
acter and condition of a class in this commu- 
nity, ninety per cent, of whom were slaves at 
the beginning of the war, or their immediate 
descendants, many of them having purchased 
their ov.-n freedom and that of their fomilies, 
and are besides property holders to a consid- 
erable extent. Sir, I call this a good record 



40 



if not a proud one. These people are here, 
and they will remain here, either as the friends 
or the enemies of the Government. If we 
5-hall give them their rights — a stake in soci- 
ety, an equal chance with the white man to 
fight the battle of life — instead of becoming 
an element of woukness and a source of dan- 
ger they will be found our allies and friends, 
and thus lend unity and strength to the Gov- 
ernment. If we shall continue to di.^'franchise 
and degrade them, we shall make them aliens, 
domestic foes in our midst, a perpetual men- 
ace of danger and discord, from which we 
shall suffer quite as much as the party thus 
wronged by our cruel folly. As a matter of 
mere policy, therefore, wholly aside from the 
question of right, I would give the ballot to 
every colored man of competent age in the 
District; and had I the power I would secure 
to him a home on the soil he has so lomg 
watered by his tears. I proposed this policy 
for the revolted States in a measure I had the 
honor to report to this House two years ago, 
providing for homesteads on the forfeited and 
confiscated lands of rebels ; and had it prevail- 
ed in the Senate as it did in this body, it 
would have wrought out the only true recon- 
struction of government and society in the 
South. The great want of every poor man is 
a home, along with the ballot with which to 
defend it. Kussia, in giving freedom to her 
millions of serfs, secured to each of them a 
homestead. Our policy should be the same. 
In the history of the world the ballot has gen- 
erally followed the granting of homesteads to 
the poor; but the poor now should have the 
ballot as the surest means of attaining the 
homestead. Sir, there is but one remedy for 
the appalling picture recently presented by 
John Bright, of live million families in the 
ITnited Kingdom who are unrepresented in 
Parliament, and whose utter helplessness, pov- 
erty and degradation appeal in vain to the 
English aristocracy. Tiiat remedy, as right- 
eously due these voiceless millions as the sun- 
light, is the ballot. That would " bend the 
powers of statesmanship to the high and holy 
purposes of humanity and justice," and at last 
make sure to the lowliest the blessed sanctu- 
ary of a home upon the soil, which is among 
the natural rights to secure which " Govern- 
ments are instituted among men." In our 
own more favored country the ballot and the 
homestead may go together, and should be 
conferred at once. In the live great landed 
States of the South there j'et remain about 
fifty million acres of public land unsold, all of 
which, if not prevented by law, will be open 
to rebel speculators. This should be set apart 
at once for actual homesteads in limited quan- 
tities, and a bill providing for this is now be- 
fore the Committee on Public Lands. Every 
landless freedman in the country, should this 
measure prevail, will have at least a clianco 
to become a freeholder, and thus to unite his 
destiny to the GoviM-nment as its friend. 
Tills, or some kindred measure, is rondored 
absolutely necessary by the unfortunate fail- 
ure of the policy of ooufiscation, and by what 



seems to mo the criminal action of the Gov- 
ernment in restoring to flagitious rebels, 
through pardons and otherwise, the vast and 
valuable lands which had vested in the nation 
through their treason, and are so greatly need- 
ed and have been so justly earned by the 
frcedmon. Sir, no other policy than that of 
justice and equal rights can be trusted in deal- 
ing with these long-suffering people. Instead 
of driving them to thriftlcssncss and vaga- 
bondism, I would bind them to the Govern- 
ment through its parental care for their wel- 
fare. Let us give them the ballot ; and then, 
should a public grievance come, they will bear 
it cheerfully, as self-imposed. They will bide 
their time, in the hope that at a future elec- 
tion the remedy will be found. "I can con- 
ceive no greater social evil," says Governor 
Parsons, of Alabama, "than a class of human- 
ity in our midst so excluded from the social 
pale as to become a stagnant, seething, mias- 
matic, moral cesspool in the community. Hu- 
man nature cannot improve without the moral 
incentive of hope in a human future." The 
policy of education, of moral development, 
can alone secure the just rights and the liigh- 
est good of all races; and if the rulers of other 
countries were wise, they would apply this 
truth in dealing with their discontented and 
dangerous population. " Each class in Eng- 
land," says the Westminster Review, " as it 
has, by tlie natural progress of civilization, in 
time advanced to a consciousness of its own 
condition, and a comparison between itself 
and others has in turn demanded to be admit- 
ted to a share in the Government. Each in 
turn has been admitted, and the country has 
grown more and more powerful, and the peo- 
ple more contented, as the basis of freedom 
has gone down lower and spread out wider." 
Sir, I trust this lesson of English history, 
slowly evolved, and now held up to us by 
English radicals, will not be slighted in deal- 
ing with the question of negro enfranchise- 
ment in our own country. 

Mr. Speaker, if it shall be objected that the 
negroes of this District are not fit to vote ; that 
they are too ignorant and degraded to be in- 
trusted with power, I have several replies to 
make. 

In the first place, the negroes of this Dis- 
trict are not all ignorunt, as I have already 
shown by facts. 3Iany of them are educated 
and quite intelligent. The larger class who 
are not so will not suffer by a compa.-ison 
with the very large class of their ignorant 
white neighbors. The " rounders" and ruf- 
fians wholnstigate mobs against harmless and 
peaceable colored people, and then publish 
their deeds as a negro insurrection, and wlio 
have probably been on the side of the rebels, 
in sympathy or in fact, during the whole of 
the 'war, are not the most fit men in the world 
for the ballot. They vote, and there is no 
proposition from any quarter to disfranchise 
thorn. The policy of Massachusetts, referred 
to yesterday by the gentleman from Iowa, 
[Mr. Kasson,] would leave them untouched. 



41 



I commend this fact, to all the fair-minded op- 
ponents of negro suffrage. 

In the next place fitness is a relative term. 
Nobody is 'perfectly fit to vote, because no- 
body is perfectly informed as to all the sub- 
jects of our legislation and policy. Of the 
millions in our land who regularly go to the 
polls and pass upon the gravest questions, 
how many could stand even a tolerable ex- 
amination on political economy, or consti- 
tutional law, or political ethics? How many 
men of good sense and fair intelligence could 
give a well-defined reason even for some of 
their most decided opinions ? The truth is, all 
men are more or less unfit to vote, as all men 
are more or less unfit to discharge all their du- 
ties, civil, social, religious, or what not. The 
political opinions and actions of the generali- 
ty of men, who in a free country govern, are 
not guided by logic, or any exact knowledge, 
but by habit and tradition, by their social re- 
lations, and by their natural trust in those 
whom they think wiser than themselves. On 
this subject the highest authority of which I 
have any knowledge is John Stuart Mill. 
He says : 

" It is not necessary that the many should, in them- 
selves, be perfectly wise ; it is sufficient if thny be duly 
sensible of the value of superior wisdom. It is suffi- 
cient if they be aware that the majority of political 
questions turn upon considerations of whicli they and 
all other persons not trained for the purpose must ne- 
cessarily be very imperfect judges, and that their 
judgment must, in general, be exercised upon the 
characters and talents of the persons whom tney ap- 
pomt to decide those questions for them, rather than 
upon the questions themselves. Thisimplies no great- 
er wisdom in the people than the very ordinary wis- 
dom of knowing what things they are and are not suffi- 
cient judge.s of. If the bulk of any people possess a 
fair share of this wisdom, the argument for universal 
suffrage, so far as respects that people, is irresistible." 

Sir, by this standard I am willing to have 
the colored people of this District tried ; and 
I demand the same trial for the white men 
who are loudest in their protest against negro 
ballots. 

Mr. Garfield. I desire to ask the gentle- 
man whether, in his reference to the opinion 
of John Stuart Mill, he quotes that distin- 
guished writer as in favor of unqualified suf- 
frage ? 

Mr. Julian. No, sir. I quoted from him 
simply to show his opinion as to the measure 
of intelligence deemed by him necessary to 
qualify men for suffrage. I q noted the extract 
because it sustains the point I am arguing. 

Mr. Garfield. I did not ask the question 
witli a view of opposing any doctrine the gen- 
tleman is advocating, but merely to suggest 
that Mr. Mill, in the volume from which the 
gentleman has just quoted, takes strong 
ground in favor of suffrage restricted by edu- 
cational qualifications, 

Mr. Hill. Mr. Speaker, I understand my 
colleague to base his argument in fovor of 
negro suffrage in the District of Columbia 
upon the personal right of suffrage. I desire 
to ask my colleague whether he regards that 
as a personal right elsewhere than in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia ; and whether, as a citizen of 
Indiana, where, it is notorious, negroes have 



not for years past been permitted to migrate, 
he is willing to extend that right to his own 
State? 

Mr. Julian. I shall refer to that question 
presently ; and answer it, I think, to the sat- 
isfaction of my colleague. 

Mr. Speaker, mere knowledge, education in 
its ordinary sense, will not fit any man to vote. 
It must depend, as Dr. Lieber says, upon how 
men use it. He declares it to be no guaran- 
tee for free institutions, and refers to Prussia, 
the best educated country in the world, where 
liberty is an outlaw. The reading and writ- 
ing test, so strenuously urged on this floor, is 
a singularly insufficient measure of fitness. 
Reading and writing are mechanical proces- 
ses, and a man may be able to perform them 
without any worthiness of life or character. 
He may lack this qualification, and yet be 
tolerably fit to have a voice in the Govern- 
ment. If penmanship must be made the ave- 
nue to the ballot, I fear several honorable gen- 
tlemen on this floor will be disfranchised. A 
merely educational test would allow all the 
rebel leaders to vote, while the great body of 
the people of the South, white and colored, 
would be disfranchised. Sir, education of the 
heart is fitr more important than that of the 
brain. " The soul is greater than logic." 
The hearts of the negroes have been unfalter- 
ingly with us all through the war, inspiring 
their judgment, vivifying their convictions, 
and insuring their universal loyalty. They, 
of all men in the South, have best vindicated 
their title to the ballot. 

Mr. Speaker, our American democracy has 
never required any standard of knowledge as 
a condition of suffrage; and the educational 
test, invented by the Know-Nothings some 
years ago, during their raid against the for- 
eigners, would not now be thought of but for 
our proverbial hatred of the negro. Accord- 
ing to our census tables, more than half a mil- 
lion men in our country annually go to the 
polls who can neither read the Constitution 
nor write their names. The proposition to 
disfranchise this grand army of ignorant men 
would meet with very little favor in any quar- 
ter. No public man dreams of it, and any 
such purpose as to the ignorant white men of 
this District is expressly disavowed by the 
advocates of restricted suftVage in this House. 
Sir, the real trouble is that we liaie the vegro. 
It is not his ignorance that offends us, but his 
color; for those who are loudest in their op. 
position to universal suffrage would be quite 
as unwilling to give the ballot to Prederick 
Douglass as to the most ignorant freedman in 
the South. Of this fact 1 entertain no doubt 
whatever, and I commend it to the attention 
of conservative gentlemen on this floor, who 
imagine that a vote for qualified negro suf- 
frage will be less oflensive to their negro- 
hating constituents than for the bill now un- 
der discussion. 

In further reply to the argument which 
would disfranchise the negroes on account of 
their ignorance, allow me to say that the rul- 
ing class have made them ignorant by genera- 



42 



tions of oppression, and no man should bo al- 
lowed to take advantage of his own wrong. 
Sir, how can the negro emerge from his igno- 
rance and barbarism if left under the heel of 
his old tyrant? I agree that in any scheme 
of universal suffrage universal knowledge, as 
far as posssble, sliould be demanded; but 
universal suffrage is one of the surest means 
of securing a higher level of intelligence for 
the whole people. I would not level the edu- 
cated classes downward, but the ignorant 
masses upward, by giving them political pow- 
er and the incentive to rise. Ourtirst duty is 
to take off their chains, as the best means of 
preparing them for the ballot. By no means 
would I disparage education, and especially 
political training; but the ballot is itself a 
schoolmaster. If you expect a man to use it 
well you must place it in his hands, and let 
him learn to cast it by trial. If you wish to 
teach a iiian to swim, you must first put him 
in the water. If you wish to teach him how to 
handle the tools of the mechanic, you must first 
put them in his hands. If you wish to teach 
the ignorant man, black or white, how to vote, 
you must grant him the right to vote as the 
first step in his education. The negro, I am 
sure, will generally be found voting on the 
side of his countrj^, and gradually learning 
his duties as a citizen. Sir, let one rule be 
adopted for white and black, and let us, if 
possible, dispossess our minds, utterly, of the 
vile spirit of caste which has brought upon 
our country all its woes. 

Mr. Speaker, I rejjly still further, that my 
argument is not at all invalidated if I admft 
that the white people of this District are de- 
cidedly superior to the negroes in education 
and general intelligence. This very superi- 
ority would give them an important advan- 
tage over the class not thus favored. It would 
become a powerful weapon in carrying out 
their peculiar purposes ; and these will cer- 
tainly be antagonistic to the best good of 
those whom law and usage nave so long in- 
jured and degraded. If any class will be pe- 
culiarly exposed, and need the strongest safe- 
guards, it will be the negroes, who have been 
made comparative children in knowledge and 
self-help. All class rule is vicious ; but if one 
class must rule another, it will be found far 
better to allow the prerogative to the labor- 
ing many, whose usefulness and numbers best 
entitle them to it, than to confer it upon the 
aristocracy, the "gentlemen," the idlers, who 
will of course maintain their privileges. The 
many who have been denied equal rights, and 
suffered from the privation, will bo quite as 
fit for political power as the few who have had 
no such experience. 

Mr. Speaker, I hope I need not replj' to 
the argument often urged, that negro voting 
will lead to the amalgamation of races, or so- 
cial equality, which now seems to mean the 
same thing. On this subject there is nothing 
left to conjecture, and no ground for alarm. 
Negro sutfrage has been very extensively 
tried in this country, and we are able to ap- 
peal to facts. Negroes h.id the right to vote 



in all the colonies save one, under the Arti- 
cles of Confederation. They voted, I believe, 
generally, on the question of adopting the 
Constitution of the United States. They 
have voted ever since in New York and the 
New England States, sav.e Connecticut, in 
which the pi-actice was discontinued in 1818. 
They voted in New Jersey till the year 
1840; in Virginia and Maryland till 1833; 
in Pennsylvania till 1838 ; in Delaware 
till 1831 ; and in North Carolina and Ten- 
nessee till 1836. I have never understood 
that in all this experience of negro suffrage 
the amalgamation of the races was the result. 
I think these evils are not at all complained 
of to this day in New England and New York, 
where negro suffrage is still practiced and re- 
cognized by law. Indeed, the fact is notori- 
ous, that amalgamation is almost totally un- 
known, except in a state of slavery, W'hich ob- 
literates the ties of life, and subjects the negro 
woman to the unbridled power of the master 
race. Sir, give the colored man the ballot, so 
that he may maintain the liberty already 
nominally conferred, and the best possible step 
will have been taken to regulate and purify 
the relations heretofore existing between the 
races. Should the copperheads and rebels of 
this District feel in danger of matrimony with 
their African fellow-citizens in consequence 
of negro suffrage, I would have Congress j^ass 
a law for their protection ; but I would not 
withhold the ballot from the colored people for 
a reason so contingent, and so uncomplimen- 
tary to their character and taste. 

Nor do I deem it necessarj', Mr. Speaker, 
to dwell on the argument that negro voting 
will lead to negro office-holding, negro domi- 
nation, and ultimately to a war of races. Such 
an argument, current as it is in certain quar- 
ters, finds no shadow of support in any known 
facts. The experience to which I have refer- 
red certainly can alarm no one, and the in- 
stances are rare, if in fact any can be adduc- 
ed, in which colored men have held office, 
though their numbers, as in States like Penn- 
sylvania, Virginia and Maryland, w'ere very 
large when black suffrage was allowed. Sir, no 
fact is more notorious, and at the same time 
more discreditable, than the nearly universal 
prejudice of the white race in our country 
against the negro. That prejudice will not 
pass away swiftly, but graduallj^ and slowly. 
Like every other form of injustice, it will ul- 
timately die ; but the prospect of this is clear- 
ly not immediate. AVe are certainly not yat 
so in love with the negro that we prei'er him 
as our ruler ; but when the fact shall be real- 
ized, it will not be negro domination, but 
negro rule of choice, by white as well as black 
suffrage, and cannot therefore lead to an j' war 
of races. This is quite evident; for though 
the negroes here are numei-ous and in portions 
of the South constitute the majoritj', the tide 
! of emigration from the North and from Eu- 
rope must very soon place the white race 
largely in the ascendant everywhere. I pre- 
sent these considerations in order, if possible, 
to calm the fears of my conservative friends ; 



4.3 



for us to myself, my faith in democratic prin- 
ciples depends not at all upon any temporary 
or local results of their application. Sir, a 
•war of races in this country can only be the 
result of denying to the negro his rights, just 
as such wars have been caused elsewhere; and 
the late troubles in Jamaica should teach us, 
if any lesson can, the duty of dealing justly 
with our millions of freedmen. Like causes 
must produce like results. English law made 
the slaves of Jamaica free, hut England failed 
to enact other laws making their freedom a 
blessing. The old spirit of domination never 
died in the slave-master, but was only mad- 
dened by emancipation. For thirty years no 
measures were adopted tending to protect or 
educate the freedmen. At length, and quite 
recently, the colonial authorities passed a 
whipping act, then a law of eviction for peo- 
ple of color, then a law imposing heavy im- 
post duties, bearing most grievously upon 
them, and finally a law providing for the im- 
portation of coolies, thus taxing the freedmen 
for the very purpose of taking the bread out 
of the mouths of their own children! I be- 
lieve it turns out, after all, that these outrag- 
ed people even then did not rise up against the 
local government; but the white ruffians of 
the island, goaded on by their own unchecked 
rapacity, and availing themselves of the in- 
fernal pretext of a black insurrection, perpe- 
trated deeds of rapine and vengeance that 
find no parallel anywhere, save in the acts of 
their natural allies, the late slave-breeding 
rebels, against our flag. Sir, is there no warn- 
ing here against the policy of leaving our 
freedmen to the tender mercies of their old 
masters? Are the white rebels of this Dis- 
trict any better than the Jamaica villains to 
whom I have referred ? The late report of 
General Schurz gives evidence of some impor- 
tant facts which will doubtless apply here. 
The mass of the white people in the South, he 
says, are totally destitute of any national 
feeling. The same bigoted sectionalism that 
swayed them prior to the war is almost uni- 
versal. Nor have they any feeling of the 
enormity of treason as a crime, To them it is 
not odious, as very naturally it would not be, 
under the policy which foregoes the punish- 
ment of traitors, and gives so many of them 
the chief places of power in the South. And 
their hatred of the negro to-day is as intense 
and scathing, and as universal, as before the 
war. I believe it to be even more so. The 
proposition to educate him and elevate his 
condition is everywhere met with contempt 
and scorn. They acknowledge that slavery, 
as it once existed, is overthrown ; but the con- 
tinued inferiority and subordination of the 
colored race, under some form of vassalage or 
serfdom, is regarded by them as certain. Sir, 
they have no thought of anything else; and 
if the ballot shall be withhel'd from the freed- 
men after the withdrawal of military power, 
the most revolting forms of oppression and 
outrage will be practiced, resulting, at last, 
in that very war of races which is foolishly 



apprehended as the efi"cct of giving the ne- 
gro his rights. 

Mr. Speakei-, a more plausible, if not a 
more formidable objection to negro suffrage 
in this District remains to be noticed. Most 
of the Northern States refuse the ballot to 
their colored citizens, and even deny them 
their testimony in suits in which white per- 
sons are parties. In Indiana, which has done 
so noble and glorious a part in the war, we 
have a constitutional provision, and laws made 
in pursuance of it, by which negroes from 
other sections of our country are forbidden to 
enter the State. It is made a penal ottence 
for any negro or mulatto to come into her 
borders, or'for any white person to bring him 
in, or employ him after he shall have come. 
Now, how can the Eepresentatives of such 
States be expected to vote for negro suffrage 
in this District? If Congress, having the 
sole and exclusive power of legislation here, 
ought to give the ballot to the negro, why 
should not Indiana give the ballot te her ne- 
gro population? And how can western Ee- 
presentatives face their constituents and an- 
swer this question, after having supported 
this bill ? And it is just here that its passage 
must encounter its greatest peril; for members 
of Congress, however patriotic, will be ex- 
ceedingly glad to escape this dilemma, and 
to avoid the committal to the policy of negro 
suffrare generally, which would seem to be 
implied in the support of this measure. 

In seeking to meet this difficulty, several 
considerations must boborne in mind. In the 
first place, the demand for negro suffrage in 
this District rests not alone upon the general 
ground of right, of democratic equality, but 
upon peculiar reasons superinduced by the 
late war, which make it an immediate prac- 
tical issue, involving not merely the welfare 
of the colored man but the safety of society 
itself. If civil government is to be revived at 
all in the South, it is perfectly self-evident 
that the loyal men there must vote ; but the 
loyal men are the negroes, and the disloyal 
are the whites. To put back the governing 
power into the hands of the very men who 
brought on the war, and exclude those who 
have proved themselves the true friends of 
the country, would be utterly suicidal and 
atrociously unjust. Negro suffrage in the 
districts lately "in revolt is thus a present po- 
litical necessity, dictated by the selfishness of 
the white loyalist as well as his sense of jus- 
tice. But in our Western States, in which 
the negro population is relatively small, and 
the prevailing sentiment of the white people 
is loyal, no such emergency exists. Society- 
will not be endangered by the temporary post- 
ponement of the right of negro suflVage till 
public opinion shall render it practicable, and 
our western Eepresentatives can thus vote for 
this bill without encountering any reasonable 
hostility from their conservative constituents, 
and leaving the question of suflrage in tho 
loyal States to be decided by them on its p.ier- 
its. If Indiana bad gono out of her proper 



44 



place in the Union, and her loyal population 
had been found too weak to force her back in- 
to it without negro bullets and bayonets, and 
if- after thus coercing lier again into her con- 
stitutioiuil orbit, her loyalists had been found 
unable to hold her there without negro ballots, 
the question of negro sutfrage in Indi;\na 
would most obviously have been very differ- 
ent from the comjiaratively abstract one that 
it now is. It would, it is true, have involved 
the question of justice to the negroes of Indi- 
ana, but the transcendantly broader and more 
vital question of national salvation also. Let 
me add further, that should Congress pass this 
bill, and should the ballot be given to the ne- 
groes in the sunny South generally, those in 
our northern and western States, many of 
them at least, may resturn to their native land' 
and its kindlier skies, and thus quiet the 
nerves of conservative gentlemen who dread 
too close a proximity to those whose skins, 
owing to some providential oversight, were 
somehow o; other not stamped with the true 
orthodox luster. 

It should be further remembered, Mr. 
Speaker, that the bill before us relates ex- 
clusively to this District, and those municipal 
and pidioe powers which are to be exercised 
here under the laws of Congress. Were it in 
fact dangerous and unwise to give the negro 
a voice "in the general legislation of the 
covmtry, I can see no objection whatever to 
the experiment of black suffrage in this 
District, in the purely local administration 
of its affairs. For very excellent reasons, 
alreadv given, I believe the negroes here are 
entitled to the ballot, and are at least as fit as 
multitudes of white men who are unquestion- 
ably to have it. They have done their full 
share in saving the nation's life. Many of 
them went into the Army as the substitutes 
of white ruffians and vagabonds who daily 
"damn the nigger," and whose unprofitable 
lives were saved by the black column which 
stood between them and the bullets of the 
rebels. Sir, let the experiment be fairly made 
here, on this model political farm of the na- 
tion. Should it fail. Congress will abandon 
it ; should it work well, it may prove a most 
excellent forerunner of measures of larger 
justice to the colored race in our land. I do 
not mean to say that the colored soldiers of 
this District should alone have the ballot, 
because no such rule is proposed or thought 
of as to white voting. If the white rabble of 
this District who did not enter our Army, 
and who to a great extent were in sympathy 
with the public enemy, are to vote, as they 
undoubtedly will, it would be a very mean 
mockery of justice to withhold the ballot 
from Uiyal negroes who, although they did 
not fight, furnished the Government with 
their full share of men. 

Mr. Speaker, I ask conservative gentlemen 
on this floor to consider duly one other fact. 
If difficulties arc to bo encountered in voting 
for this bill, still greater difficulties are to be 
met in voting against it, and I know of no 
half Ava.v ground in dealing with fundamental 



principles. To vote against this measure ia 
to vote against the first truths of democratic 
liberty. It is to vote for the old spirit of 
caste and the old law of hate which have so 
terribly blasted our land. It is to vote down 
justice and install misrule and maladministra- 
tion as king. It is to sanction and encour- 
age, by the national example, the barbarous 
and worse than heathen laws of the nortliern 
and western States, already referred to, which 
so loudly call for our rebuke. It is to make 
a record which the roused spirit of liberty 
and progress, and the thick-coming events of 
the future, will certainly disown and turn 
from with shainc. Ami while such a vote 
might tend to placate the conservative and 
the trimmer, it would offend those radical 
hosts now everywhere springing to their feet, 
and preparing for battle against every form 
of inequality and injustice, and in favor of 
" all rights for all." Sir, justice is safe. The 
right thing is the expedient thing. Demp- 
cracy is not a lie. God is not the devil, " nor 
was Christianity itself established by priae 
essays, Bridgewater bequests, and a minimum 
of four thousand five hundred a year." Far 
better will it be for a northern Representativje 
and for the cause of llepublicanism itself to 
vote on the right side of this question, even 
should it cost him his seat on this floor, than 
to vote on the wrong side, and thus maintahi 
his place by the sacrifice of both his own 
manhood and the public welware intrusted to 
his hands. Sir, I agree that the passage of 
this bill would tend to open the way to per- 
fect equality before the law in all the States. 
I do not deny that the public would so under- 
stand it, and I decline none of the consequen- 
ces of my vote. Mr. Jefferson, speaking of 
the negroes, declared that "whatever be their 
degree of talent it is no measure of their 
rights," and he likewise declared that " among 
those who either pay or fight for their country 
no line can be drawn." That is my demo- 
cracy. "The one idea," says Humboldt, 
"which history exhibits as evermore develop- 
ing itself into greater distinctness, is the idea 
of humanity, the noble endeavor to throw 
down all barriers erected between men by 
prejudice and one-sided views, and, by setting 
aside the distinctions of religion, country, and 
color, to treat the whole human race as one 
brotherhood." Sir, on this broad ground, co- 
incident with Christianity itself, 1 plant ray 
feet; and no man can fail who will resolutery 
maintain it. 

Mr. Speaker, I must not conclude my argji- 
ment without referring to one further con- 
sideration, by which the passage of this bill, 
in my judgment, is urgently demanded. I 
have argued that the ballot should be given 
to the negroes as a matter of justice to thepi. 
It should likewise be done as a matter of re- 
tributive justice to the slaveholders and rebels. 
According to the best information I can d\>- 
tain, a very large majority of the white people 
of this District have been rebels in heait 
during the war, and are rebels in heart still. 
That contempt for the negro and scorn of free 



iriclustr_v which constituted the mainspring of 
the rebellion cropped out here during the ■svar 
in every form that was possible, under the 
immediate shadow of the central Government. 
Meaner rebels than many in this District 
could scarcely have been found in the 
whole land. They have not been punished. 
"fhe halter has been cheated out of their 
necks. I am very sorry to say that under 
what seems to be a false mercy, a misapplied 
humanity, the guiltiest rebels of the war have 
thus far been allowed to escape justice. I 
have no desire to censure the authorities of 
the Government for this fact. I hope they 
liave some valid excuse for their action. This 
qiiestion of punishment, I know, is a difficult 
Ohe. The work of punishment is so vast that 
it naturally palsies the will to enter upon it. 
It never can be thoroughly done on this side 
of the grave. And were it practicable to 
punish adequate)}' all the most active and 
guilty rebels, justice would still remain un- 
satisfied. Far guiltier men than they are, the 
rebel sympathizers of the loyal States, who 
coolly stood by and encouraged their friends 
in the South in their work of national rapine 
and murder, and while they were ever ready 
to go joyfully into the service of the devil, 
were too cowardly to wear his uniform and 
carry his weapons in open day. But Congress 
in this District has the power to punish by 
ballot, and there will be a beautiful poetic 
justice in the exercise of this power. Sir, let 
it be applied. The rebels here will recoil 
from it with horror. Some of the worst of 
them, sooner than submit to black sufirage, 
will doubtless leave the Disti'ict, and thus 
render it an unepeakable service. To be 
voted down and governed by Yankee and 
negro ballots will seem to them an intoler- 
able grievance, and this is among the excel- 
lent reasons why I am in favor of it. If 
neither hanging nor exile can be extempor- 
ized for the entertainment of our domestic 
rebels, let us require them at least to make 
their bed on negro ballots during the re- 
mainder of their unworthy lives Of course 
they will not relish it, but that will be their 
own peculiar concern. Their darling institu- 
tion nuist be charged with all the consequen- 
ces of the war. They sowed the wind, and if 
required must reap the whirlwind. Eetribu- 
tion follows wrong doing ; and tliis law must 
work out its results. Eebels and their 
sympathizers, I am sure, will fare as well 
under negro suffrage as they deserve, and I 
desire to leave them, as far as practicable, in 
tlie hands of their colored brethren. ISIor 
shall I stop to inquire very critically whether 
the negroes are fit to vote. As between 
themselves and white rebels, who deserve to 
be hung, they are eminently fit. I would not 
have them more so. Will you, Mr. Speaker, 
will even my conservative and Democratic 
friends, be particularly nice or fastidious in 
the choice of a man to vote down a rebel ? 
6hull we insist upon a perfectly finished 



gentleman and scholar to vote do^n the 
traitors and white trash of this District, who 
have recently signalized themselves by mob- 
bing unoffending negroes ? Sir, almost any- 
body, it seems to me, will answer the pur^jose. 
I do not pretend that the colored men here, 
should they get the ballot, will not sometimes 
abuse it. Thej' will undoubtedly make mis- 
takes. In some cases they may even vote on 
the side of their old masters. But I feel 
pretty safe in saying that even white men, 
perfectly free from all suspicion of negro 
blood, have sometimes voted on the wrong 
side. Sir, I appeal to gentlemen on this 
floor, and especially to my Democratic 
friends, to say whether they can not call to 
mind instances in which white men have 
voted Avrong? Indeed, it rather strikes me 
that white voting, ignorant, depraved, party- 
ridden Democratic white voting, had a good 
deal to do in hatching into life the rebellion 
itself, and that no results of negro voting are 
likely to be much worse. I respectfully com- 
mend this consideration to my friend from 
Iowa, [Mr. Kasson,] and to conservative 
gentlemen here on both sides of this Hall. 
Sir, as I have argued elsewhere, all men are 
liable to make mistakes. The democracy I 
stand by, the fitness to govern which I believe 
in, is the aggregate wisdom and practical 
common sense of the whole people. This, 
and not the wisdom of our rulers, or of any 
select few, carried us safely through the 
rebellion, and this only can be trusted in 
time to come. The:e is no other reliance 
under God for us, as the champi(_)ns and ex- 
emplars of Eepublicanism, and the sooner we 
braveljf accept this truth the better it will be 
for all races and orders of men composing our 
great body-politic. In demanding the ballot 
in this District for the despised and defense- 
less, I simply demand the national recognition 
of Christianity, which is ''the root of'all de- 
mocracy, the highest fact in the rights of 
man." I beseech gentlemen to rernember 
this. As the lawgivers of a disenthralled 
Republic, let us not write " infidel" on its 
banner, by trampling humanity and justice 
under our feet in these high places of power. 
The question is ours to decide. The right, so 
earnestly prayed for, is ours to bestow. The 
assumption set up by the white voters here of 
the right to decide this question is as super- 
latively ridiculous as it is sublimeljnmpudent. 
They have no more right to vote themselves 
the exclusive depositaries of power in this 
District than the inmates of its penitentiary 
have to vote themselves at liberty to go at 
large. Congress is the sovereign and sole 
judge; and what the colored men here ask at 
our hands, for their just protection, and as 
their sure refuge, is the ballot — 

' .1 weapon firmer set, 



And better than the bayonet ; 

A wenpon tliat comes down as still 

As snow-flakes fnll np'.n the sod ; 
But expcntes a freeman's will 

As lightning does ihe \\'\\\ of God." 



Amendment of the Constitution, 



Hon. GEOEGE W. JULIAN, 

In the house OP EEPRESENTATIYES, Janxjaky 29, 18G6. 



The Honso having under consideration the 
joint resohition rcp(n'ted by the committee on 
reconstruction for the amendment of the Con- 
stitution of the United States — 

Mr. Julian said : 

Mr. Speaker: Before this debate shall be 
concluded, I desire to submit some observa- 
tions which I deem important, and which I 
r3«pectfull3' commend to the consideration of 
those who advocate the proposition reported 
bj' the joint committee of fifteen. How I 
shall filially cast my vote on that proposition, 
I cannot now certainly decide. I find diffi- 
culties in my path ; and I shall feel much 
obliged to any gentleman who may be able 
and willing to clear them away, and thus, 
perhaps, assist others on this floor in reaching 
a just conclusion. I should regret, excecd- 
ino-ly, to separate myself from those with 
w'aom I habitually act here, by opposing the 
measure referred to, and I must not do so 
without recording my reasons ; and these rea- 
sons, in so far as they possess weight, may 
serve as my protest against whatever is objec- 
tionable in that measure, should its modifica- 
tion be found impracticable, and I should 
finally give it my support as the best thing 
within our power. 

Under the constitutional injunction upon 
the United States to guaranty a republican 
form of government to every State, I believe 
the power already exists in the nation to reg- 
ulate the right of sufl-rage. It can only 
exercise this power through Congress; and 
Congress, of course, must decide what is a re- 
publican form of government, and when the 
national authority shall interpose against 
State action, for the purpose of executing the 
constitutional guarantee. Ko one will deny 
the authority of Congress to decide that if a 
State should disfranchise one-third, one-half, 
or two-thirds of her citizens, such State would 
cease to be republican, and might be required 
to accept a ditfcrent rule of suffrage. If Con- 
gress could intervene in such a case, it could 
obviously intervene in any other case in which 
it might deem it necessary or proper. It cer- 
tainly might decide that the disfranchisment 
by a State of a whole race of people within 
her borders is inconsistent with a republican 
form of government, and in their behalf, and 
in the execution of its own authority and 



duty, restore them to their equal right with 
others to the franchise. It might decide, for 
example, that in North Carolina, where 631- 
000 citizens disfranchise 321,000, the govern- 
ment is not republican, and should be made 
so by extending the franchise. It might do 
the same m Virginia, where 719,000 citizens 
disfranchise 533,000 ; in Alabama, where 
596,000 citizens disfranchise 337,000; in Geor- 
gia, where 591,000 citizens disfranchise 465,- 
000; in Louisiana, where 457,000 citizens 
disfranchise 350,000; in Mississippi, where 
353,000 citizens disfranchise 436,000 ; and in 
South Carolina, where onh' 291,000 citizens 
disfranchise 411,000. Can any man who rev- 
erences the Constitution deny either the au- 
thority or the duty of Congress to do all this 
in the execution of the guarantee named? Or 
if the 411,000 negroes in South Carolina were 
to organize a government, and disfranchise her 
291,000 white citizens, would anybody doubt 
the authority of Congress to pronounce such 
government anti-republican, and secure the 
ballot equally to white and black citizens as 
the remedy ? Or if a State should prescribe as 
a qualification for tlie ballot such an owner- 
ship of property, real or personal, as would 
disfranchise the great body of her people, 
could not Congress undoubtedly interfere ? 
So of an educational test, which might fix the 
standard of knowledge so high as to place the 
governing power in the hands of a select few. 
The power in all such cases is a reserved one 
in Congress, to be exercised according to its 
own judgment, with no accountability to any 
tribunal save the people; and without such 
power the nation would be at the mercy of as 
many oligarchies as there are States. Na- 
tionality would only be possible by the per- 
mission of the States. 

The same authority, Mr. Speaker, is claim.ed 
by eminent jurists under the constitutional 
amendment abolishing slavery and giving 
Congress the power, by " appropriating legis- 
lation," to "enforce'' thcprovision. The word 
" appropriate" appeals to legislative discre- 
tion, and the word "enforce" implies such 
compulsory measures as Congress may deem 
"appropriate" for the purpose of ridding the 
country of every vestige of slavery, in form 
and in fact. " There can be no denial," said 
Chief Justice Parsons, not long since, "that 
when this whole amendment shall be adopted 



47 



Congress -will have the constitutional power 
— be its exercise of this power wise or unwise 
— to rend slavery out from our whole country, 
root and branch, leaf and fruit, and guard 
effectually against its return in any form, or 
under any guise, or to any extent." The na- 
tion, in other words, having given freedom 
to four millions of people, can make that free- 
dom a blessing by conferring it in substance, 
as well as in name. It not only can do this, 
but is sacredly bound to do it. The right to 
freedom carries with it the right of way to it, 
and that right of way is the ballot. Without 
it the freedom of these people is a delusion 
and a lie. 

The freedmen of the South are not free, and 
cannot be, when left to the domination of 
their former masters, exasperated by their de- 
feat in a war which outraged civilization by 
thus aiming to perpetuate their rule. I need 
not argue this proposition, because no man 
can dispute it without ignoring the most obvi- 
ous principles of human nature, and closing 
his eyes to well authenticated facts of recent 
occurrence in the island of Jamaica and in 
the States lately in revolt. Sir, every gentle- 
man on this floor knows what a shadow and a 
mockery is the freedom thus far vouchsafed 
to the millions now declared free by the Con- 
stitution, and that to commit their fortunes 
to the tender mercies of white rebels would 
be like committing the lamb to the jaws of 
the wolf. But if I am right, then Congress 
could unquestionably' place the ballot in the 
hands of the loyal freedmen, and thus arm them 
with the power of self-defense, and save them 
from a condition of pitiless serfdom, in com- 
parison with which slavery in its old form 
would be a blessing. I ask, gentlemen, there- 
fore, to remember, that should every proposed 
amendment of the Constitution now before 
this House be voted down, we shall not, I 
think, be wholly without a remedy for the 
evil we are so anxious to cure. Instead of 
restricting representation to actual suffrage, 
we can extend sulfrage to actual representa- 
tion, which will be far better. It is true, 
that the power of Congress to guaranty re- 
publican governments in the States through 
its intervention with the question of suf- 
rage, has not hitherto been exercised; but 
this certainly does not disprove the exist- 
ence of such power, nor the expediency of its 
exercise now, under an additional and inde- 
pendent constitutional grant, and when a fit 
occasion for it has come through the madness 
of treason. It will not be forgotten that we 
have entered upon a new dispensation. Sla- 
very sleeps in its bloody shroud. Its shaping- 
hand, as we believe, Avill no longer mould our 
national policy at home or abroad. Its evil 
genius will no longer inspire our public men, 
and give law to the nation from the supreme 
bench ; but in the noonday radiance of uni- 
versal liberty, the Government, I trust, in all 
its departments, will find its speedy deliver- 
ance from the trammels of the past. Such, at 
least, is my hope. 

But, Mr. Speaker, I may be mistaken. We 



may not be able, at a single bouiul, to escape 
the benumbing influence of slavery. Our 
exodus from the long and sore bondage of the 
past, may be tedious and toilsome. Our 
dwarfed manhood may require time and judi- 
cious tonics to restore its original vigor. I 
cannot feel at all confident in the opinion I 
have expressed, when I find so many distin- 
guished gentlemen on this floor insisting that 
we are still bovxnd by former interpretations 
of the Constitution, in the interest of slavery. 
I therefore favor a Constitutional amendment 
which shall make certain that which may 
otherwise remain doubtful. But I do not see 
how I can consistently support the amend- 
ment reported by the joint committee, though 
I do not say that I will not. In the first 
place, it seems to me that it offends the moral 
sense of the country. It provides "that when- 
ever the elective franchise shall be denied or 
abridged in any State on account of race or 
color, all persons of such race or color shall 
be excluded from the basis of representation." 
Sir, what right has any State " to deny or 
abridge the elective franchise on account of 
race or color?" To assent to such a proposi- 
tion is to insult humanity and mock justice. 
It is, moreover, as absurd as to deny or 
abridge the franchise on account of the dist- 
ance across the Atlantic or the height of the 
Alleghanies. Why not say, in the plain 
aflSrmative words of the am.e'ndment submit- 
ted by the gentleman from 3Iassachusetts, 
[Mr. Elliot,] that— 

'= Tlie elective franchise ijhall not be denied or 
abridged in any State on account of race or color ?" 

The distinguished chairman of the joint 
committee concedes the right of a State under 
the Constitution to disfranchise its citizens 
for such cause, and so does my friend from- 
New York, [Mr. Conkling.] If they are 
right, then the very thing to be done 'is to 
amend the Constitution in that particular. 
Have we any authority to sacrifice the rights 
of a whole race in the South in order to save 
ourselves from the evils of unequal represen- 
tation, and thus compound with injustice and 
oppression? Will the world justify us in 
protecting our own political rights and 
abridging the rights of white rebels at the 
expense of millions of freedmen who will 
thus be made the vicarious victims of our 
policy ? Would that be an honest payment 
of the debt we righteously owe them? My 
friend from Ohio, [Mr. "Bingham] differs 
with his colleagues on the joint committee as 
to the right of a State to disfranchise her 
citizens, and defends the proposed amend- 
ment as a mere penaltj', designed to restrain 
the States from violating their constitutional 
duty. 

Mr. Bingham. I do not admit and never 
have admitted that any State has a right to 
disfranchise any portion of the citizens of the 
United States, resident therein, entitled to 
vote for Kepresentatives under the second 
section of the first article of the Constitution, 
except as a punishment for their own crimes. 
A citizen may forfeit his right by crime, and 



48 



tlie State may enforce that forfcituve. I fa- 
vor this amendment as a penalty in aid of the 
rights guaranteed by the Costitution as it 
now stands. 

Mr. Julian. The gentleman niii^undcr- 
stands what I said. I have just stated what 
the gentleman from Ohio now alRrms, that he 
defends the amendment reported by the 
committee as a mere penalty intended to re- 
strain the States from striking down the rights 
of their citizens under the Constitution; but 
as we are now endeavoring to amend the 
Constitution, why incorporate it in a mere 
penalty against its violation, which at least 
seems to i'mply the right to violate it, if the 
penalty shall be accepted ? Since the whole 
policy of the Government fi'om its beginning 
has yielded the right of the Southern States 
to disfranchise their people of color, why not 
provide a positive prohibition of such right? 
Mr. Madison declared it to be wrong "to 
admit in the Constitution the idea that there 
can be property in man." So I say it seems 
to me wrong to admit in this amendment the 
idea that the rights of the citizen can be taken 
away by reason of color or race, and that in 
perfecting the organic law of the nation we 
should avoid any phraseology which by any 
possibility would admit a construction so fatal 
to the fundamental principle of all free gov- 
ernment. Why temporize by adopting half- 
way measures and a policy of indirection ? 
The shortest distance between two given 
points, is a strait line. Let us follow it, in so 
important a work as amending the Constitu- 
tion. The advocates of the proposed amend- 
ment do not profess to be satisfied with it. 
They confess that it comes short of its pur- 
pose. They say they have another proposition 
in reserve which will cover the whole ground 
Then why not bring it forward and let us 
meet it on its own merits? Why j-ield any 
longer to the policy of compromise? Sir, 
remembering the mistakes of our fathers in 
the beginning, and the frightful legacy to 
their children which has been the result, let 
us be warned against any short-sighted and 
temporary expedients to-day. Let us bring 
ourselves face to face with the great demand 
of the nation upon us, and then appeal to the 
people to sanction a plain, unambiguous 
amendment of the Constitution, which we 
believe to be necessary to their future se- 
curity. 

But the advocates of this measure, while 

{ promising us a better, frankly tell us it is the 
jest we can now hope to secure They defend 
it on this ground, and insist that our present 
alternative is between its adoption, and the 
representation of four million loyal colored 
people in Congress bj' ex-rebels, who would 
utterly misrepresent their wishes and tram- 
ple down their rights. To this, several an- 
swers are obviously suggested. 

In the first place, how do you know that 
tliG broad proposition I advocate, will fail in 
Congress, or before the people? These are 
revolutionary days. Whole generations of 
common time are now crowded into the span 



of a few years. Life was never before so 
grand and blessed an opportunity. The man 
mistakes his reckoning, who judges either the 
present or the future by any political almanac 
of by-gone years. Growth, development, 
progress, are the expressive watchwords of 
the hour. Who can remember the marvel- 
ous events of the ]>ast four years, necessitated 
by the late war, and then predict the failure, 
of further measures, woven into the same fab- 
ric, and born of the same inevitable logic ? It 
is only a few days since this nation, speaking 
through its llepresentatives on this floor, by 
a vote of IIG against 54, deliberately sactioned 
the very policy I urge, as an amendment to 
the Constitution of the United States. Sir, if 
that policy is right in this District, shall we 
decline to extend it over the districts lately 
in revolt where far sti'onger reasons plead for 
it? Shall wo distrust the people, who have 
been so ready to second all radical measures 
during the war, and now speak with such 
emphasis on emerging, with newly anointed 
vision, from its terrible baptism of fire and 
blood ? And besides, how do you know, Mr. 
Speaker, that even the proposition reported 
by the committee can prevail, either in Con- 
gress or in the States ? It encounters, I know, 
a veiy considerable opposition here, and I 
sincerely hope it may be re-committed and 
amended. It may encounter a greater oppo- 
sition in the States. Its indirect mode of 
reaching a desirable result, and its apparent 
i-ecognit^ion of the infernal heresy of State 
sovereignty, ma}" seriously endanger, if not 
totally defeat, the proposition. Sir, I hope 
this suggestion will not be deemed unworthy 
of consideration. But the question, after all, 
is, what amendment of the Constitution, if 
any, is really demanded ? If we can agree as 
to this, then we should submit it, trusting in 
God, in the people, and in the great educa- 
tional forces now everj'where at work, that it 
will prevail. Should it fail for a season, it 
will triumph ultimately, and in the end repay 
all the cost of its delay. Neither constitu- 
tional amendments nor reforms in any other 
direction could make such headway, if no man 
should ever espouse them till the people are 
found prepared to accept them without oppo- 
sition or dissent. 

Again, Mr. Speaker, it should not be for- 
gotten that the proposed amendment, should 
it prevail, must fail of its purpose, till after 
the census of 1870. If I am not mistaken, 
there could be no new allotment of llepreson- 
tavies among the Southern States, prior to 
that time. If I am mistaken, and the Con- 
stitution will permit us to take another cen- 
sus whenever we choose, it will not make 
any practical difference, as no one proposes 
that measure, and if adopted, the re-apportion- 
ment under the new census, could not take 
etJ'ect sooner than the time I have named. 
In all these intervening years, therefore, these 
rebel States must have their full rejiresenta- 
tions under the existing basis, or else their rep- 
resentatives must be kept out of Congress. If 
thoy should be admitted, prior to the passage 



49 



of the amendment, there would be no coer- 
cive authority in the hands of the Executive 
or Congress to constrain any State to ratify 
the amendment, and it could not be ratified. 
If the Soutliern Eepresentatives should not 
be admitted, then the evils of unequal repre- 
sentation would be avoided, so long as they 
are kept out. The object of the amendment, 
therefore, namely, the reduction of rebel rep- 
resentation in Congress and the extension of 
suffrage to the whole people of the South, 
could not be secured before the year 1870, or 
1872, if the next census shall be taken at the 
regular time ; and then it would remain for 
the Southern States to say whether they 
would give the ballot to the negroes, or still 
cling to that unchristian spirit of caste and 
lust of power which have so long been the 
higher law of the South. If I am correct in 
making these statements, much of the alleged 
practical significance of the proposed amend- 
ment is made to disappear, and we are thus 
the better prepared to demand the amend- 
ment, really necessary and effective, or else 
such congressional action as shall grant suf- 
frage to the people of the South, irrespective 
of color. Should both these measures for the 
present be found impracticable, I do not see 
that any great interest of the country will 
sufiTer in consequence, while the regular inarch 
of events and the great tidal force of public 
opinion will at length open the way for such 
action, in some form, as shall be required by 
the national exigency. 

Finally, Mr. Speaker, I deny that the reb- 
els of the South, who are the rulers of the 
South, would grant the ballot to the negro if 
the proposed amendment were now in full 
force. They would not do it, because their 
love of domination, their contempt for free 
labor, and their scorn of an enslaved and 
downtrodden race are as intense as ever. 
They hate the negro now, not simply as the 
ally of the Yankee in foiling their treason, but 
as the author of all their misfortunes, who, 
having been villainonsly misused by them, is 
of course villainously despised. They hate 
him with a rancor that feeds unceasingly 
upon every memory of their humiliation and 
defeat. They confront him with a hatred so 
remorseless, withering, consuming, that it 
crops out to-day in every quarter of the South, 
in deeds of outrage, violence, and crime, 
which find no parallel even in the atrocities 
practiced in that section under the old codes 
of slavery, which were codes of murder and 
all minor crimes. Can any gentleman read 
the late report of General Schutz, and listen 
to the testimony of the great cloud of concur- 
ring witnesses whose voices are now filling 
the land, respecting the popular feeling in 
the South, and then believe that the rebel 
class will ever, under any inducements, vol- 
untarily give equal political rights to the 
freedmen ? The leaders of southern opinion 
openly declare that they would rather die 
than give the ballot to their former slaves. 
While it would give their section an increased 
representation in Congress, that representa- 
3 



tion woiild be secured by the votes of negroes, 
and abolitionists, whose darling purpose 
would be to Yankeeize and abolitionize the 
entire South, and put the old slave dynasty 
hopelessly unded their feet. And the old 
slave dj-nasty understands this perfectly. 
They know that negro sufl'rage, by checking 
rebel rapacity and restoring oixler, and thus 
rendering emigration from the North and 
from Europe a safe and practicable thing, 
will re-organize the whole structure of society 
in their region, and thus doom their pride and 
sloth to a hopeless conflict with the energy 
and enterprise of free labor. Do you tell me 
that men are governed by their own interests 
and that the ruling class in the South, find- 
ing no other way to serve those interests, will 
extend suffrage to the negroes? I answer, 
that long-cherished and traditionary prejudi- 
ces and passions are stronger than interest. 
It was always the true interest of the South 
to abolish her slavery, but she waged a horrid 
war to save and eternize it. She could al- 
ways have increased her power in Congress 
by its abolition, but she loved her domination 
over the negro moi'e than she loved political 
pov^er. It was the interest of the northern 
States, long ago, to unite in checking the ag- 
gressions and the further spread of slaA'ery in 
the Union, and thereby to hasten the employ- 
ment of peaceable measures in the South for 
its abandonment; but the northern States, on 
the contrary, became the allies of the slave 
breeders in fortifying and extending their 
rule on this continent. It was the interest of 
our first pjarents not to sin, but the devil proved 
too much for them. Sir, the argument of 
interest will not do. Passion is stronger than 
interest, because, being blind, it does not per- 
ceive the best good. Before I agree to en- 
trust the freedmen to the interest of their old 
masters, I want to know that they understand 
what their interest is, and that they have so far 
outlived their prejudices that they will follow 
it. I think no gentleman on this floor can 
feel sure on these points. What we want, 
what the nation needs for its own salvation, 
is a constitutional amendment, or a law of 
Congress which shall guaranty the ballot to 
the freedmen of the South. This is not sim- 
ply his equal political right as a citizen, but 
his natural right as a man. As I have argued 
on another occasion, a voice in the Govern- 
ment which deals with property, liberty, and 
life, is not a " privilege," but right, and as 
natural, as indefeasable as the right to life 
itself. Government cannot rightfully with- 
hold it, but it is as sacredly bound to secuj'cit 
to all men, regardless of race or color, as it is 
bound to secure other rights which are ac- 
corded to them by comirion consent as nat- 
ural. In this view I am very glad to find 
myself sustained by some of the ablest men in 
this House. Our fathers affirmed, as a self- 
evident truth, that all men are endowed by 
their Creator, with the right of life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness ; and that Gov- 
ernments are instituted among men to secure 
these rights, deriving their just powers from 



50 



the consent of the governed. Sir, let us not 
shrink from the practical vindication of this 
truth. Let us recognize no such anomaly in 
our free system of government as a disfran- 
chized citizen, innocent of crime, but prize 
the franchise as so sacred that a man -without 
it shall everwhere, and of necessity, wear the 
brand of a convicted enemy of society. Let 
us not preach a mere lip-democracy, while we 
confess by our acts, our faith in the maxims 
of despotism. Let us not, with the warnings 
of the past before us, still continue to deny 
the very gospel of our political salvation, and 
arm the absolutists of the Old World with 
weapons fatal to every just theory of republi- 
canism. Let us not make enemies and out- 
laws of four million people, among whom no 
traitor or sympathizer with treason has ever 
yet been found ; who were eagar to help us 



from the very beginning of our struggle, and 
as soon as we were ready gladly furnished 
nearly two hundred thousand soldiers to aid 
in saving the nation's life; and who, if al- 
lowed justice at our hands, will be found in 
the future, as they have been in the past, our 
eifective auxiliaries and faithful friends. — 
Above all, let us remember, for our own sake 
as well as that of the colored race, that jus- 
tice is omnipotent; that her demands nmst 
be met to the uttermost farthing, and cannot 
be slighted without offending the Most High; 
and that if, when our pathway is lighted up 
by the fires of a stupendous civil war, which 
the whole world interprets as the avenger of 
these .wronged millions, we now turn a deaf 
ear to their cries, our guilt as a nation, and 
our retribution, will find no precedent in the 
annals of mankind. 



OOJie Punishment of Jxehel Leaders, 

sipeech: OIF 

Hon. GEOKGE ^i. JULIAE^, 

In the house OF REPRESENTATIVES, April 30th, 1866. 



The House having under consideration the 
following resolution: 

Resolved, (as the deliberate judgnifnt of this House,) 
That the speedy trial of Jetfereou Lavir!, either by a 
civil or military tribunal, for the crime oV treason or 
the other crimes of which he stands chxrgi'd, and his 
prompt execution, if found guilty, ara Imperaiivoly 
aemanded by the people of the Un"iteii States in order 
that treason may be adequately branded by the nation, 
traitors made iufamouB, and the repetition of their 
crimes, as fur as possible, be prevented, 

Mr. Julian said: 

Mr. Speaker: In demanding the punish- 
ment of the chief rebel conspirators, I beg 
not to be misunderstood. I do not ask for 
vengeance. I feel sure there is no man in 
the country, however intense his loyalty, who 
would inflict the slightest unnecessary suffer- 
ing, or any form of cruelty, upon even the 
most flagitious of the confederate leaders. 
"What the nation desires, and all it asks, is 
the ordinary administration of justice against 
the most extraordinary national criminals 
The treason spun from their brains, and de- 
liberately fashioned into the bloody warp and 
woof of a four years' war, and the winding- 
sheet of a half million of men, ought to be 
branded by the nation as a crime. It ought 
to be made " odious" and " infamous." The 
punishment of that crime, prescribed by the 
Constitution, is death ; and I am just as un- 
willing to see the Constitution set aside and 
made void in this respect, in the interest of 
vanquished rebel leaders, as I was to see it 
trampled under foot by their armed legions 
while the war continued. Indeed, the punish- 
ment of these leaders is a necessary part of 
the logic of their infernal enterprise, and 
without it the rebellion itself, instead of being 
effectually crushed, must find a fresh incentive 
to renew its life in its impunity from the just 
consequences of its guilt. It will not do to 
say these leaders have been sufiiciently 
punished already, by the failure of their 
treason, the loss of their coveted power, and 
their humiliation, poverty, and disgrace. 
Kindred arguments would empty our jails 
and penitentiaries, and make the administra- 
tion of criminal justice everywhere a farce. 
The way of all transgressors is hard ; but this 
hardship cannot justify society in failing to 
protect itself by iitly chastising its enemies. 
Justice to the nation whose life has been at- 
tempted, and to the assassins who made the 
attempt, is the great demand of the hour. 



And here, again, Mr. Speaker, I hope I 
shall be understood. In pleading for justice 
I mean of course public justice, which seeks 
the prevention of crime by making an ex- 
ample of the criminal. Human laws do not 
pretend to fathom the real moral guilt of of- 
fenders. They have no power to do this. 
Their sole aim is the prevention of crime. 
They have nothing to do with that retributive 
justice which graduates the punishment of 
each transgressor by the exact measure of his 
guilt. To the great Searcher of all hearts 
belongs this prerogative, while society, acting 
through Government as its agent, and having 
an eye single to its own protection, must deal 
with its criminals. This, sir, is my reply to 
the plea often urged that we should not hang 
the rebel leaders, because we can not also 
hang the leading sympathizers of the north- 
ern States who are perhaps more guilty. The 
Government has nothing to do with the ques- 
tion of degrees of moral guilt or blameworthi- 
ness, either in the North or the South. Its 
concern is with the nation's enemies, whose 
overt acts of treason have made them amen- 
able to the laws, and whose punishment 
should be made a terror to evil doers here- 
after. The fact that our power of punishment 
can not reach all who are guilty, including 
many men in the loyal States who richly deserve 
the halter, is no reason whatever for allowing 
those to go un whipped who are properly within 
the reach of public justice. 

And the same reasoning applies to the 
argument sometimes urged against all punish- 
ment, founded on the numbers who would 
fairly be liable to sufler. The question is 
frequently asked, would you build a gallows 
in every village and neighborhood of the 
South? "Would you shock the Christian 
world by the spectacle of ten thousand gib- 
bets, and the hanging of all who have been 
guilty of treason, or even a respectable frac- 
tion of their number ? I answer, I would do 
no such thing. Public justice and the highest 
good of the State do not lequire it. I would 
simply apply the ordinary rules of criminal 
jurisprudence to the question, and as in other 
conspiracies, so in this grand one, I would 
mete out the severest punishment to the ring- 
leaders. Most undoubtedly I would give 
them a constitutional entertainment on the 
gallows; or should the number of ringleaders 
be too great, or the guilt of some of tliem be 



r-,9. 



less flagrant fhan others, perpetual exile might 
"be substituted. The rebel masses, both on the 
score of their numbers and their qualiticd 
guilt, should have a general amnesty ; but by 
no possible means would I spare the un- 
matched villains who conceived the bloody 
project of national dismemberment, and by 
their devilish arts lured into their horrid 
service the ignorant and misguided people of 
their section. Whoever may escape justice, 
either North or South, or whatever embar- 
rassments may belong to the problem of 
punishment at the end of this stupendous 
conflict, nothing remains so perfectly clear 
and unquestionable as tiie duty of the nation 
to execute the great malefactors who fashioned 
to their uses all the genius and resources of 
the South, and throughout the entire struggle 
invoked all the powers of hell in their work of 
national destruction. 

Mr. Speaker, the adequate punishment of 
the rebel leaders involves the whole question 
of the rebellion itself. It is not a matter 
which the Government may dispose of indif- 
ferently, but is vital to the nation's peace, if 
not to its very existence. To trifle with it is 
to trifle with public justice and the holy cause 
for which the country has been made to bleed 
and suff"er. It is to mock our dead heroes, 
and confess our own pusillanimity or guilt. 
It is to make treason respectable, and put 
loyalty under the ban. It is to call evil good 
and good evil ; and since God is not to be 
mocked, it must in some form bring down 
upon our own heads the retribution which we 
may only escape by enforcing the penal laws 
of the nation against the magnificent felons 
who have sought its life. 

Sir, I shall take it for granted that treason 
is a crime, and not a mere accident or mis- 
take. In this most frightful and desolating 
struggle there is transcendent and unutter- 
able guilt ; and I take it for granted that that 
guilt is on the side of those who wantonly 
and causelessly took up arms against the 
nation, and not on the side of those who 
fought to save it from destruction. Treason 
is a crime, and therefore not a merediflerence 
of opinion ; a crime, and therefore not an 
honest mistake of judgment about the right 
of a State to secede ; a crime, and therefore 
not a mere struggle of the South for inde- 
pendence while the North contended for 
empire; a crime, and thereibre not a mere 
"misapprehension of misguided men," as 
some of our copperhead journals aflSrm; a 
crime, and the highest of all crimes, including 
all lesser villainies, and eclipsing them all, in 
its heaven-daring leap at the nation's throat ; 
and therefore those who withstood it by arms 
■were patriots and heroes, fighting for na- 
tionality and freedom, against rebels whose 
^Burc and swift punishment .should be made 
a ■warning against the repetition of their deeds. 
Mr. Speaker, if a man were to come into 
our midst and persuade us that treason and 
loyalty are about the same thing ; that right 
and wrong, good and evil, virtue and vice, are 



convertible terms; that God and Satan are 
in fact the same personage, under difl'erent 
names, and that it matters little under whose 
banner we fight ; and if he could thus enlist 
us in the w^ork of uprooting the loundations 
of Government, of morals, of society, of 
everything held sacred among men, would he 
not be the most execrable creature in the 
universe? If he could indoctrinate mankind 
with his theory of "reconstruction," would 
not this beautiful earth of ours be converted 
into a first-class hell, with the devil as its 
king? Sir, you dare not trifle with this 
question of the punishment of traitors. The- 
ory goes before practice. Eight believing, on 
moral or political issues, precedes right act- 
ing ; and you touch the very marrow of the 
rebellion when you approach the question of 
the punishment of the rebels. Sir, there is 
not a State in this Union, nor a civilized 
country on earth, which in the treatment of 
its criminals sanctions the sickly magnanimity 
and misapplied humanity of this nation in 
dealing with its leading traitors. No civil- 
ized Government, in my judgment, could 
possibly be maintained on any such loose and 
confounded principles. Crime would have 
unchecked license, and public justice would 
not even be a decent sham. No man will 
dispute this, or fail to be amazed that, in 
dealing with our red-handed traitors, whose 
crimes arc certainly unsurpas.sed in history, 
and have filled the land with sorrow and 
blood, we utterly decline to execute against 
them the very Constitution which they sought 
to overturn by years of wholesale rapine and 
murder. 

Sir, this fact is at once monstrous and 
startling. We seize the murderer who only 
takes the life of one man, indict him, convict 
him, and then hang him. Undoubtedly some 
murderers escape punishment through par- 
dons and otherwise, but certainly the penalty 
of death is inflicted in most countries. The 
pirate, who boards a vessel on the sea, and 
murders a few sailors, is " chased by the 
civilized world to the gallows." The plea in 
his behalf of magnanimity to a vanquished 
criminal would not save him, and his friends 
would scarcely urge it. Public justice de- 
mands the sacrifice of his life, and no one 
expects him to be spared if fairly convicted. 
But Jeflerson Davis is no ordinary assassin or 
pirate. He did not murder a single citizen, 
but hundreds of thousands of men. He did 
not board a ship on the sea and murder a few 
sailors, but he boarded the great ship of state, 
and tried, by all the power of his evil genius, 
to sink her, cargo and crew, with the hopes of 
the world forever, into the abyss of eternal 
night. And is not his guilt as much greater 
than that of an ordinary assassin or pirate as 
th« life of a great republic is greater than the 
life of one man? Was not each one of these 
leaders a national assasin, aiming his bloody 
dagger at the country's vitals, and is not his 
guilt multiplied by the millions whose inter- 
ests were imperiled? And shall justice only 



53 



be defied by the world's grandest villains and 
outlaws, and mercy defile herself by taking 
them into her embrace ? 

Mr. Speaker, Jefferson Davis was a favored 
child of the Kepublic. He had been educated 
at the nation's expense, and upon him had 
been lavished the honors and emolii;i.ents of 
office. He owed his country nothing but 
gratitude and fidelity, and no man understood 
these obligations better than himself. Again 
and again he had asked his Maker to witness 
that he would be faithful to the Constitution, 
which at the time he was plotting to destroy. 
Long years before the rebellion he had been 
inoculating the public opinion of the South 
with the poison of his heresies, and secretly 
hatching his treason in the foul atmosphere 
which lie helped to create. His perfidy was 
most cold-blooded, deliberate, and premedi- 
tated. In order to blast the Government of 
his fathers, and establish upon its ruins a con- 
federacy with slavery as its corner-stone, he 
has ruthlessly wrapped his country in fire 
and blood. He has wantonly destroyed the 
lives of more than two hundred and fifty 
thousand soldiers, who gloriously perished in 
resisting his treason in arms. He has maimed 
and crippled for life more than two hundred 
and fifty thousand more. He has duplicated 
these atrocities in his own section of the 
Union. He has organized grand conspiracies 
in the North and Northwest to lay in rapine 
and blood the towns and cities and plantations 
of the whole loyal portion of the land. He 
has put to death, by the slow torture of star- 
vation in rebel prisons, sixty thousand brave 
men who went forth to peril their lives in 
saving the country from his devilish crusade 
against it. He has deliberately sought to 
introduce into the United States and to na- 
tionalize among us pestilence, in the form of 
yellow-fever ; an enterprise which, had it 
succeeded, would have startled the very 
heavens above us wi^h the agony and sorrow 
it would have lavished upon the land. He 
stands charged by the Government with the 
murder of the President of the United States, 
and that charge, as I am well assured, is 
amply verified by proofs which will very 
soon be given to the public, and awaken a 
stronger and sterner demand for his punish- 
ment. He has instigated the burning of our 
hotels. He has planted infernal machines in 
the tracks of his armies. He has poisoned 
our wells. He has murdered our wounded 
soldiers. He has made drinking cups of 
their skulls and jewelry of their bones. He 
has spawned upon the world atrocities so 
monstrous as to defy all definition, and which 
nothing but the hot incubation of the slave 
power, as the ripe fruit of its two hundred 
years of diabolism, could have warmed into 
life. Sir, he has done every thing, by the 
help of his confederates, that an incarnate 
demon could do to let loose " the whole con- 
tagion of hell," aud convert his native land 
into one grand refuge of devils. 

Mr. Speaker, the pardon of a criminal so 



strongly partaking of treason against the 
nation. It would be at once a monstrous 
denial and a frightful mockery of justice. 
Do you plead for mercy to the great con- 
federate assassin? I refer that plea to the 
Father of Mercies, who, I believe, only 
pardons on condition of repentance ; and as 
yet I have heard of no rebel leader who even 
professes penitence for his crimes. Sir, I 
repudiate, as counterfeit, the mercy which can 
only be exercised by trampling justice under 
our feet, while it forgets both justice and 
mercy to the millions who have been made to 
mourn through striclcen lives by the human 
monsters who plunged our peaceful country 
into war. The loyal people of the nation 
demand that they be dealt with as criminals. 
For myself, I would not have a civil trial for 
the leader of a belligerent power, which has 
maintained a public war against us for years. 
The nation can not afford to submit the ques- 
tion of the right of a State to secede to a jury 
of twelve men in one of the rebel States, and 
a majority of them traitors, under an implied 
alternative that if they fail to convict, the 
Government itself would stand convicted of 
half a million of murders. After the nation 
has established its right to exist by a four 
years' war, it can not put that right on trial 
by a jury of its conquered enemies, or any 
earthly tribunal. Sir, let Jefferson Davis be 
tried by a military court, as he should have 
been, promptly, at the time other and smaller 
offenders were dealt with a year ago. Let 
hitn have the compliment of a formal inquiry 
to determine what the whole Avorld already 
knows, that he is immeasurably guilty. And 
when that guilt is pronounced let the Govern- 
ment erect a gallows, and hang him in the 
name of the Most High. I put aside mercy 
on the one hand, and vengeance on the other, 
and the simple claim I assert, in the nation's 
behalf, is justice. In the name of half a 
million soldiers who have gone before their 
Maker as witnesses against " the deep damna- 
tion of their taking ofi';'' ii^ the name of our 
living soldiers, who have waded through seas 
of fire in deadily confli'ct with rebels in arras; 
in the name of the Republic, whose life has 
only been saved bj^ the precious offering of 
multitudes of her most idolized children; in 
the name of the great future, with its pro- 
cession of countless generations of men, whose 
fate to-day swings in the balance, awaiting 
the example you are to make of treason, I 
demand the execution of Jefferson Davis. 
The gallows is the symbol of infamy through- 
out the civilized world, and no criminal ever 
earned a clearer right to be crowned with its 
honors. 

Sir, I ask why the Constitution should be 
mocked when it demands his life? What 
right have the authorities of the Government 
to cheat the halter out of his neck ? Not for 
all the honors and offices of this nation, not 
for all the gold and glory of the world, would 
I spare him if in my power; for I would ex- 
pect the ghosts of three hundred thousand 



transccndently guilty -would be an act in itself j murdered soldiers to haunt my poor, cowardly 



54 



life to tlie grave. As I havo said already, the 
punishment of the rebel conspirators is a ne- 
cessary part of the work of suppressing the 
rebellion. Their treason was deliberately 
aimed at the cause of free government on 
cartli, and thoy are justly to be classed among 
the guiltiest wretches whose crimes ever 
drenched the earth in blood. Every one of 
them should have a felon's death. The grave 
of every one of them should bo made a grave 
of infamy, and the cause they served should 
be pilloried by all the ages to come. Sir, if 
you discharge the confederate chiefs because 
of the very magnitude of their work of car- 
nage, you offer a public license to treason 
hereafter. You say to turbulent and sedi- 
tious spirits every where that they have full 
liberty, when it may suit their convenience, 
to levy war aginst the nation, and that while 
it may lead their deluded followers to whole- 
sale slaughter, ihey shall be allowed to escape. 
You say that although the nation participa- 
ted in the hanging of John Brown as a trai- 
tor, for the crime of loving libertj^ " not wisely, 
but too well," that same nation, which has 
copied John Brown's example in emancipat- 
ing slaves by militarj' power, shall turn loose 
upon society the hideous monster who waged 
war to establish and eternize a mighty slave 
empire on the ruins of our free institutions. 
And you speak it in the ear of the nation as 
3'our deliberate estimate of the value of free 
government, whose very life is the breath of 
the people, that the bloody conspirator who 
.seeks to destroy it by the hand of war is un- 
deserving of punishment, and consequently 
innocent of crime. 

Mr. Speaker, can we, dare we, hope for the 
favor of God in thus confounding the distinc- 
tion between right and wrong, between trea- 
son and loyalty, and forgetting that govern- 
ment is a divine ordinance, Avhose authority 
can only be maintained by enforcing obedi- 
ence to its mandates ? I speak earnestly, be- 
cause I feel deeply, on this question of the 
punishment of leading traitors. The grand 
peril of the hour comes from the mistake of 
the Government on this point. During the 
war our deserters and bounty jumpers were 
executed. Our brave boys, overcome by wea- 
riness, who fell asleep at their posts as senti- 
nels, were shot. A year ago the miserable 
tools of Davis and Lee, selected for their in- 
fernal deeds because of their known fitness to 
perform them, were suumarily tried and 
hung. But in no solitary instance has trea- 
son yet been dealt with as a crime. Pardon, 
pardon, pardon, has been the order of the day, 
as if the Government desired to make haste to 
apologize for its mistake in lighting traitors, 
and wished to reinstate itself in their good 
opinion. Beccaria, in his celebrated Essay on 
Crimes and Punishments, says that "clemency 
is a virtue which belongs to the legislator, 
;;nd not to the executor of the laws ; a virtue 
which ought to shine in the code, and not in 
private judgment. To show mankind that 
crimes are sometimes pardoned, and that pun- I 
ishment is not the necessary consequence, \% I 



to nourish the flattering hope of impunity, 
and is the cause of their considering every 
punishment inflicted as an act of injustice 
and oppression. The prince, in pardoning, 
gives up the public security in favor of an in- 
dividual, and b}' ill-judged benevolence pro- 
claims a public a?t of impunity." 

Dr. Lieber says that " every pardon granted 
upon insufficient grounds becomes a serious 
offence against society, and he that grants it 
is, in justice, answerable for the offences which 
tlie offender may commit, and the general 
injury done to political morality by undue 
interference with the law." With these wise 
and just sentiments the President of the Uni- 
ted States, on acceping his high office, per- 
fectly agreed. He declared that mercy to the 
individual is often cruelty to the State. He 
said that "robbery is a crime, murder is a 
crime, treason is a crime, and crime must be 
punished." He said that " treason must be 
made odious and traitors impoverished," and 
he reiterated and multiplied these declara- 
tions on very many occasions which were of- 
fered him for weeks and months following his 
inauguration. He repeatedly referred, appro- 
vingly, to his past record, covering declara- 
tions in favor of hanging leading traitors, in 
favor of dividing up their great plantations 
into small farms for honest and industrious 
men, without regard to color, and in favor of 
breaking up the great aristocracy of the South, 
and compelling the rebels to " take the back 
seats in the work of reconstruction." For a 
season the whole loyal country was electrified 
by the clear ring of his words, while rebels 
were as completely palsied and dumb. They 
understood the new President quite as little 
as his loyal friends. They expected no quar- 
ter, and studiously sought their pleasure in 
the will of the Executive. They would have 
assented glrtdly to anj^ terms or conditions of 
reconstruction dictated by him, including 
even negro suffrage. Having staked all on 
the issues of war and lost, they felt that they 
were entitled only to such rights as the con- 
queror might see fit to impose. 

Sir, this golden season was sinned aAvay by 
the President, and that systematic recreancy 
to his pledges and record which has marked 
his subsequent career, has brought the country 
into the most fearful peril. The responsibil- 
ity is upon him, and it must be measured by 
the magnificent opportunity which the situa- 
tion afforded him for an easy solution of our 
national difficulties, and at the same time a 
solid and permanent reconstruction of the 
South. "No important political movement," 
says a famous English writer, "was ever ob- 
tained in a period of tranquillity. If the 
effervescence of the public mind is suffered to 
pass away without etroct, it would be absurd to 
expect from languor what enthusiasm has not 
obtained. If radical reform is not, at such a 
moment, procured, all partial changes are 
evaded and defeated in the tranquility which 
succeeds." These are suggestive and solemn 
words, and the reflection is a very sad on.i 
that the nation to day would have been saved 



55 



and blest, if the President had heeded them. 
He disobeyed the divine command to " exe- 
cute justice in the morning," and did not 
even remember the heathen maxim, that "the 
gods themselves cannot save those who neg- 
lect opportunities." 

Sir, while I dislike the occupation of an 
alarmist, I must say that I have seen few 
darker seasons than the present since the first 
battle of Bull Kun. The President has not 
kept the faith. He has not favored the hang- 
ing of a siaigle rebel leader. He has not made 
treason infamous, nor impoverished traitors. 
He has not favored the confiscation of rebel 
estates and their distribution among the poor. 
He has not required traitors to take the back 
seats in the work of reconstruction. He has 
not co-operated with Congress in placing the 
governing power of the South and of the na- 
tion in the hands of loyal men. He has not 
■ shown himself the " Moses" of our loyal col- 
ored millions in leading them out of their 
grievous bondage. He has done the opposite 
of all these. The Kichmond Times, the lead- 
ing organ of treason in Virginia, says that 
" in his course towards the mass of those who 
supported the southern confederacy the Presi- 
dent has been singularly magnanimous and 
wisely lenient. Nine tenths of those who for 
four years with unparalleled gallantry upheld 
the confederacy, have long since been uncon- 
ditionally pardoned. The cabinet oflicers 
who counseled the president of the confeder- 
acy, the congressmen who enacted those strin- 
gent conscript and imprisonment laws which 
kept up our armies, and many distinguished 
generals of the confederate armies, have ei- 
ther been formaly pardoned, or been released 
upon parole, and no one dreams that they will 
ever be molested in person or estate. The 
military bastiles of the country, with one ex- 
ception, have long since been thrown open, 
and the distinguished confederate officers who 
were confined in them have been restored to 
their friends and families." And these Vir- 
ginia traitors who thus damn our President 
by their encomiums openly demand the uncon- 
ditional release of Jcfl'erson Davis from prison. 
Judging the President by the logic of his pol- 
icy thus far, the demand will be complied 
with. When he decided, nearly a year ago, 
against the trial of Davis by a military court, 
he virtually decided that his treason should 
go unpunished; for no jury of southern reb- 
els would ever find a vei'dict of guilty, and 
the trial itself would only be an insult to the 
nation. Jeflerson Davis, I doubt not is to be 
restored to his family and friends, and the 
argument of consistency demands it at the 
hands of the President. 

Robert E. Lee, whose spared life has out- 
raged the honest claims of the gallows ever 
since his surrender, is running at large, per- 
fectly unmolested and saftf from all harm. 
Black with treason, perjury, and murder, 
guiltier by far than the Christless wretch 
who obeyed his orders in starving our soldiers 
at Andersonville, he goes his way in peace, 
while the Government, in this monstrous and 



appaling fact, con fesses to the world that 
treason is unworthy of its notice. He is pres- 
ident of a Virginia college, and teacher of her 
youth. He visits Washington, and tenders 
his advice to our public men about the work 
of restoring the Union. He goes before the 
reconstruction committee and gives his testi- 
mony, as if an oath could take any possible 
hold upon his seared conscience; and all that 
can be said is, that his unpunished crimes are 
doing precisely as much to make the Govern- 
ment infamous as the Government itself has 
done to make those crimes respectable. The 
Legislature of Virginia endorses him as a fit 
man for Governor, and the champions of this 
proposition visit our Republican President, 
laud his principles and policy, and take the 
front seats in the house of his friends. 

The vice president of the southern confed- 
eracy is likewise at large, and has been elec- 
ted a Senator in Congress from his State. He 
also visits Washington, and gives his testi- 
mony before the joint committee of fifteen. 
Like the other leading traitors, he very nat- 
urally "accepts the situation," because he 
could not do otherwise, but he shows not the 
smallest token of penitence; says the rebels 
were in the right, and seems wholly uncon- 
scious of his real character as simply an un- 
hung traitor, whose advice and opinions we 
shall only accept at their value. Leading 
traitors are not only pardoned by wholesale, 
but they hold nearly all the places of power 
and profit in the South. They are made 
Governors, judges, postmasters, revenue offi- 
cers, and are likewise frequently chosen to 
represent their cause in Congress ; and the 
President, our distinguished Secretary of the 
Treasury, and the Postmaster General, have 
all openly trampled under their feet the laAV 
of Congress requiring a test oath, in order 
that the rebels might fill these offices, and on 
the false pretence that loyal men could not be 
found qualified to fill them in a country which 
furnished more than forty thousand loyal 
white soldiers during the war. As might 
naturally be expected under this system of 
reconstruction, loyal men are more unsafe in 
the revolted districts noAV than they were be- 
fore the war, while the condition of the negroes 
in very many localities is more pitiably deplo- 
rable than that of their former slavery. So 
intense and wide spread is the feeling of hos- 
tility to the Union in these regions, that loy- 
alty is branded as both a crinje and a disgrace, 
while even Wilkes Booth is regarded as a mar- 
tyr, and his pictures hang in the parlors of 
"southern gentlemen," whose children are 
called by his name. 

Nor am I surprised at the audacity of the 
rebel leaders. Neither do I complain, or 
blame them. They do not disguise their real 
character and opinions, because they have 
been made sure of the executive favor. With 
the President resolutely on the side of Con- 
gress in this crisis, a very different exhibition 
of feeling and policy would have been devel- 
oped in the South. The danger now at our 
doors would never have appeared. The pros- 



56 



pect of another bloody war to complete the 
work which we supposed already accomplished 
would never have alarmed the country. The 
President has deserted the loyal millions who 
crursed the rebel cause at the end of a c(mflict 
of four years, and joined himself to that very 
cause which is now borrowing new life from 
the fertilizing sunshine of his favor, re-assert- 
ing its old heresies, and renewing its treasona- 
ble demands. This is at once the root and 
source of our present national troubles, the 
prophecy and parent of whatever calamity 
may come. The President not only opposes 
the will of the nation, the foVicy of the na- 
tion, as exj)ressed through Congress, but he 
brands as traitors before a rebel mob leading 
and representative men in both Houses, who 
are as guiltless of treason as the great majority 
with whom they act. Not content with the 
good fellowship of the men who began the 
war and fought us with matchless desperation 
to the end, he unites with them in branding 
loyalty itself as treason, whi^e he employs the 
power and patronage of his high office in re- 
warding his minions, and opposing the very 
men who made hiui their standard bearer 
along with Abraham Lincoln, in the faith 
that his loyalty was unselfish and sincere. In 
fact, every phase of the presidential policy, as 
latterly displayed, confounds the difierence 
between loyal and disloyal men, and gives 
aid and comfort to the rebels by mitigating 
or removing the just consequence of their 
crimes. 

Mr. Speaker, thispolicy, utterly fatal to the 
nation's peace, as I have shown, must be aban- 
doned. The Government cannot wholly undo 
the mistakes of the past, but it can do much 
for the future, and save the loyal cause, if the 
people, who see the threatened danger, will 
set themselves to work so resolutely as to 
compel a change. In God's name, let this be 
done. Let the people speak, for the power is 
in their hands, and if faithful now, as they 
proved themselves during the war, justice will 
prevail. Let them thunder it in the ears of 
the President that the nation cannot be saved 
nor the fruits of our victory gathered, if in 
the settlement of this bloody conflict with 
treason right and wrong are confounded, and 



public justice trampled down. This is the 
duty of the loyal millions ; and here lies the 
danger of the hour. It is just as impossible 
for the country to prosper if it shall sanction 
the present policy of the Executive, as it is 
for a man to violate a law of his physical be- 
ing and escape the consequences. The de- 
mands of justice are as inexorable as the 
demands of natural law in the material world; 
and the moral distinctions which God himself 
has established cannot be slighted with the 
least possible impunity by individuals or na- 
tions. There is a difference, heaven-wide, 
between fighting for a slave empire and fight- 
ing for freedom and the universal rights of 
man. The cause of treason and the cause of 
loyalty are not the same. Perjury is not as 
honorable as keeping a man's oath. The 
black flag of slavery and treason was not as 
noble a standard to follow as that of the stars 
and stripes. The leading traitors of the South 
should not have the same honorable treat- 
ment and recognition as the patriot heroes of 
the Union. Ihe grandest assassins and cut 
throats of history should not defraud the gal- 
lows, while ordinary murderers are hung. 
Jefferson Davis should not have the same 
honorable place in history as George "Wash- 
ington. Benedict Arnold was not the heau 
ideal of a patriot, nor was Judas Iscariot " a 
high-sovxled gentleman and a man of honor," 
nor even a misguided citizen of his country 
who engaged in a mistaken cause." The 
green mounds under which sleep our slaught- 
ered heroes are not to have any moral com- 
parison with the graves of traitors. The 
"throng of dead, leadby Stonewall Jackson," 
are not to contribute equally with the noble 
spirits of the North to the renown of our 
great Eepublic." Truth and falsehood, right 
and wrong, heaven and hell, are not mere 
names which signify nothing, but they per- 
tain to the great veracities of the universe ; 
and the throne of God itself is immovable, 
only because its foundations are justice. 

Mr. Speaker, I now move that this resolu- 
tion be referred to the Committee on the 
Judiciary. 

The motion was agreed to. 



Madicalism the Nation'' s Hojfe, 



si^eeich: OIF" 
Hon. GEOEGE W. JTJLIAI^, 

In the house OF EEPEESENTATIVES, June 16, 1866. 



The House, according to previous order, hav- 
ing wider consideration tlie President's message, 
as in Committee of the Whole — 

Mr. Julian said : 

Mr. Speaker: The conflict going on to-day 
between Coubicrvatism and Radicalism is not a 
new one. It only presents new phases, and 
more decided characteristics in its progress to- 
ward a final settlement. These elements in our 
political life were at war long years prior to the 
late rebellion. After the old questions concern- 
ing trade, currency, and the i)ublic lands, had 
ceased to be the pivots on which our national 
policy turned, and were only nominally in dis- 
pute. Conservatism put them on its banner, and 
shouted for them as the living issues of the times, 
while intelligent men everywhere saw that the 
real and sole controversy was that very ques- 
tion of slavery whicli the leaders of party were 
striving so anxiously to keep out of sight. Con- 
servatism stubbornly closed its eyes to this truth. 
Ifit ever took the form of Radicalism it was in 
denouncing tlie agitation of the subject. It be- 
lieved in conciliation and concession. It preach- 
ed the gospel of compromise. Professing hostili- 
ty to slavery, it paraded its readiness to yield 
up its convictions as a virtue. Resistance^ to 
aggression and wrong it branded as fanaticism 
or wickedness, while it was ever ready to pur- 
chase peace at the cost of principle. This policy 
of studiously deferring to the demands of arro- 
gance and insolence, this dominating love of 
peace and cowardly dread of conflict, this yield- 
ing, and yielding, ahd yielding to the exactions 
ofthe slave interest, naturally enough fed and 
pampered its spirit of rapacity, and at last arm- 
ed it with the weapDUs of civil war. Such will 
be the unquestioned and unquestionable record 
of history; and no riH'ord could be more blast- 
ing, as it will be read in the clear light of the 
future. To us belongs the privilege of taking 
counsel from the lesson in dealing with the yet 
unsettled problems of the crisis. 

But Radicalism assumed a directly anta^-onis- 
tic position. It did not believe in conciliation 
and compromise. It did not believe that a pow- 
erful and steadily advancing evil was to be mas- 
tered by submiss'iou to its behests, but by time- 
ly and resolute resistance. The Radicals, under 
whatever peculiar banner they rallied, thought 
it was their duty to take time by the forelock; 
and with prophetic ears they heard the footfalls 
of civil war in the distance, forewarned the 
country of its danger, and pointed out the way 
of deliverance. In the ages to come Freedom 
will remember and cherish them as her most 
precious jewels; for had they been seconded in 
their earnest eflbrts to rouse "the people and to 



lay hold of the aggressions of slavery in their in' 
cipient stages, the black tide of southern domi" 
nation which has since inundated the land 
might have been rolled back, and the Republic 
saved without the frightful surgery of war. 
This exalteil tribute to their sagacity and their 
fidelity to their country will be the sure award 
of history; and its lesson, like that of Conserva- 
tism, commends itself to our study. 

But the war at length came, and with it came 
the same conflict between Conservatism on the 
one hand and Radicalism on the other. Their 
antagonisms pnt on new shapes, but were as 
perfectly defined as before. The prcJof of this is 
supplied by facts so well known, and so painful- 
ly remembered by all loyal men, that I need 
scarcely refer to them. Conservatism, in its un- 
exampled stupidity, denied that rebels in arms 
against the Government were its enemies, and 
declared them to be only misguided friends. 
The counsel it perpetually volunteered was that 
of great moderation and forbearance on our part 
in the conduct of the war. It denied that slav- 
ery caused the war, or should in any way be af- 
fected by it. It insisted that slavery and free- 
dom were "twin sisters of the Constitution," 
equally sacred in its sight, and equally to be 
guarded and defended at all hazards. Its owl- 
ish vision failed to see that two civilizations had 
met in the shock of deadly conflict, and that sla- 
very at last must perish. "Even down to the very 
close of the conflict, when the dullest minds 
could see the new heavens and the new earth 
which the rebellion h.id ushered in. Conserva- 
tism madlv insisted on "the Con. titution as it 
is and the "Union as it was." Its idolized party 
leaders and its great military heroes were all 
men who believed in the divinity of slavery, 
whose hearts were therefore on the side of the 
rebellion, and whose management of the war 
gave proof of it. And every man of ordinary 
sense and intelligence knows that just so long 
and so far as Conservative counsels prevailed, 
defeat and disaster followed in our steps, and 
that if these counsels had not been abjured the 
black flag of treason would have been unfurled 
over the broken columns and shattered frag- 
ments of our republican edifice. Let this also 
be remembered in digesting a policy for the 
future. 

But here, again, Radicalism squarely met the 
issue tendered by the Conservatives. _ That 
slavery caused the war and was necessarily in- 
volved in its fortunes it accepted as a simple 
truism. Its theory was that the rebellion ^^1as 
slavery, in arms against the nation, and that to 
strike'it was to strike treason, and to spare it 
was to espouse the cause of the rebels. In the 
very beginning of the conflict Radicalism com- 



68 



prehoncled the situation aiul the duty. It under- 
stood the contlict as not simi)ly a stru,t!:gfle to save 
the Union, but a grand and final battle for the 
rifihts of man, now and hereafter; and it believ- 
ed that God would never smile iipon our endea- 
vors till we aceeptcd it as sueh. Ridicalistn, 
therefore, demanded the repeal of all laws which 
had been enacted to uphold and fortify shivery. 
It demanded the armini? of the slaves against 
their old tyrants. It demanded emancipation 
as a moral and a military necessity, and a poli- 
cy of the war so broadly and systematically anti- 
slavery as to meet the rebel power in the full 
sweep of its remorseless crusade against us. Its 
trust was in the justice of our cause and the 
favor of the Almighty; and just so soon as the 
Government turned away from its Conservati^'e 
friends and joined hands with Radicalism, our 
arms were crowned with victories, which follow- 
ed each other till the rebel power lay prostrate 
at our feet. 

But, Mr. Speaker, the war is over. So at least 
we are informed by the President; and with the 
glad return of peace comes once more the same 
issvie between Conservatism and Radicalism, 
and more clearly marked than ever before. Con- 
servatism, true to the logic which made it the 
ally and handmaid of treason all through the 
war, now demands the indiscriminate pardon of 
all the rebel leaders. It recognizes the revolted 
States as still in the Union, in precisely the same 
sense as are the loyal States, and restored to all 
their rights.as completely as if no rebellion had 
happened. It opposes any constitutional amend- 
ment which shall deprive the rebels of the re- 
presentation of the freedmen in Congress, who 
have no voice as citizens, and thus sanctions this 
most flagrant outrage upon justice and demo- 
cratic e(iuality, in the interest of unrepentant 
traitors. It opposes the protection of the mil- 
lions of loyal colored people of the South through 
the agency of a Freedmen's Bureau, and thus 
hands them over to starvation, and scourgings, 
and torture, by their former masters. It oppo- 
ses, likewise, the civil rights hill, which seeks to 
protect these people in their right to sue, to tes- 
tify in the courts, to make contracts, and to own 
property. It opposes, of course, with all bitter- 
ness, the policy of giving the freedmen the bal- 
lot, which '• is as just a demand as governed men 
ever made of governing,'' and should be accord- 
ed at once, both on the score of policy and jus- 
tice. In short, it seeks to make void and of non- 
effect, for any good purpose, the sacrifice of more 
than three hundred thousand lives and three 
thousand millions of money, by its eager service 
ofllie heaven-defying villains who causelessly 
brought this sacrifici? upon the nation. 

But on all thesepoints Radicalism takes issue. 
It holds that treason is a crime, and that it ought 
to lie punished. "While it does not ask for ven- 
geance, it demands public justice against some 
at least of the rebel leaders. It deals with the 
revolted States as outside of their constitutional 
relations to the Union, and as incapable of re- 
storing themselves to it except on conditions to 
be prescribed by Congress. It demands the im- 
mediate reduction of representation in the States 
of the South tothe basis of actual voters, and the 
amedcment of the Constitution for that purpose. 
It favors the protection of the colored [jeople of 
the South, through the Freedmen's Bureau and 
civil rights bills, as necessary to make effective 
theconstitutional amendment abolishing slavery 
And for the same reason. Radicalism, when not 
smitten by unn:itural fear or afflicted by policy, 
demands the billot as the right of every colored 
citizen of the rebellious States. Sueh have l)een 
the issues between Conservatism and Radical- 



ism, some of which are disposed of by time; and 
they are all in facts f ide issues, save the grand 
and all-comprehending one of suftYage. Let this 
De settled in harmony with our democratic in- 
stitutions and all else will be added. 

And in dealing with this problem, Mr. Speak- 
er, whose counsel shall we follow? Shall we be 
guided by Conservatism, which paved the way 
for the rebellion by its policy of concession and 
compromise, which would have handed the 
country over to the rebels when the war was 
upon us if its policy had been adhered to, and 
to-day would give to the winds the fruits of our 
victory? Or shall our guide be that same Rad- 
icalism which would have averted the rebellion 
if its counsel had been heeded, which alone sav- 
ed us when war came, ancf now asks us to ac- 
cept its inevitable logic in seeking a true basis 
of peace? Can a loyal man hesitate in his an- 
swer? Sir, we can neither stand still nor take 
any backward step. For myself, at least, I shall 
])ress right on; and my strong faith is that the 
loyal people of the country will not madly at- 
tempt a halt in that grand march of events 
through whicn the hand of Providence is so visi- 
bly guiding the nation to liberty and lasting 
peace. 

Mr. Speaker, of all the questions pertaining to 
the late rebellion which have been so much de- 
bated, it seems to me none could be more per- 
fectly simple and unembarrassed than that of 
giving the ballot to the freedmen of the South. 
This would be conceded at once, if it were pos- 
sible to forget the institution of slavery, and the 
foul legacy of prejudice and hate which it has 
bequeathed to us all. I believe the present dis- 
cussions of the subject, and our gingerly reluc- 
tance to face the issue squarely, will hereafter 
be set down among the curiosities of American 
politics. Sir, what is the proposition? It is 
simply to extend our democratic institutions 
over the States recently in revolt, which have 
been overpowered by our arms, and are now 
subject to the national jurisdiction. The mass 
of the whitepeopleof the South, including those 
who have been in arms against the Government, 
have the ballot; and there is no pending propo- 
sition to deprive thoin of it. But we imagine 
insuperable difficulties in the way of giving it to 
the colored people, who constitute the majority 
in several States, who have been uiu\ ersally 
Inyal, and have furnished a strong body of sol- 
diery in the war for tlie Union. Can this, in- 
deed, be true? 

Alexander Hamilton, in the fifty-fourth num- 
ber of the Federalist, speaking of the slaves, 
says : " It is admitted that if the laws were to 
restore the rights which have been taken away, 
the negroes could no longer be refused an equal 
share of representation with the other inhabi- 
tants." Most certainly he was right. Why then 
shirk the question ! Would we do so if these col- 
ored men were white? No man will pretend it. 
Why not secure the ballot to the men who have 
been restored to their lights through the trea- 
son of their masters? "Liberty, or freedom," 
says Dr. Franklin, "consists inhaving an actu- 
al share in the appointment of tlioso who frame the 
laws and who are to be the guardians of every man's 
life, propertv, and peace ; for the all of one man is 
as dear to him as the all of another ; and the poor 
man has an e(/ual riffht. but 7nore need, to have re- 
presentatives in the Legislature than the rich one." 
And he goes on to say : " That they who have no 
voice nor vote in the electing of representatives do 
not. enjoij liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to 
those who" /ia 06 votes, and to their representatives; 
for to be enslaved is to have governors whom other 
men have set over us ; and bo subject to laws 



59 



made by the representatives of others, without 
havinn; had representatives of o\v^ own to give con- 
sent in o^ir behalf." This, in different words, is the 
doctrine of James Otis, that " taxation without repre- 
sentation is tyranny," and was the principle on which 
our revolutifinary fathers planted themselves in re- 
sisting British despotism. Shall we shrink from it 
to-dar, when just emorfring from a frightful civil 
war, caused by our infidelity to the rights of man ? 
Are we still to love the rebels so tenderly that we 
must not offend them by a policy of equal and exact 
justice between them and the loyal men who resisted 
their devilish crusade against the national life? "We 
hold those truths to be self-evident, that all men are 
created equal ; that they are endowed by their Cre- 
ator with certain inalienable rights, among which 
are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ; and 
that to secure these riglits governments are insti- 
tuted among men, deriving their jnst powers from 
the consent of the governed." Do we still doubt 
these truths, thus named self-evident, after having 
seen them written in fire and blood during the past 
four years? Men talk eloquently of the natural 
equality of all men, and the sovereignty of the popu- 
lar will. Sir, if we are not hypocrites, why not ac- 
cept these principles by reducing them to practice 
everywhere throughout the Republic ? If all men 
are equal in their inborn rights, every man has the 
right to a voice in the governing power ; and that 
right is as natural as the right to the breath of his 
nostrils. It is not a privilege, but a righ ^ and you 
insult republicanism and brand the preat Declara- 
tion as a lie, when you dispute it. You espouse the 
cause of absolutism at once : for if one portion of 
the people, black or white, can deprive another of 
their rights, the whole theory of American democra- 
cy is overturned. That wise men, in Congress and 
out of Congress, should deal with this question as a 
difficult and complicated one seems incredibly 
strange. The very horn-book of republicanism set- 
tles it ; and if the teachings of our fathers are in 
fact to be accepted, and the poisonous exhalations of 
slavery shall ever be dispelled from the minds of 
men, a disfranchised citizen, white or colored, inno- 
cent of crime, will become an unknown anomaly. 
This much I say on general principles, and wholly 
aside from those considerations which plead imper- 
atively for impartial suffrage in the South, on the 
score of justice and gratitude to the negro, the peace 
and well-being of society, and the stability of the 
Union itself. 

But our power over the subject of suffrage in the 
States lately iu revolt is disputed ; and doubts re- 
specting it are expressed even by the joint committee 
of fifteen iu their elaborate and very able report just 
given to the public. Sir, I never hear these opin- 
ions and doubts uttered without unmingled astonish- 
ment. In the whole domain of politics and jurispru- 
dence a proposition cannot be found more perfectly 
beyond dispute than that Congress can prescribe the 
qualifications of voters in the States that rebelled 
against the national authority, and have been subdu- 
ed by our arms. I do not now speak of the power 
conferred in the clause of the Constitution making it 
the right and duty of Congress to guaranty a repulj- 
lican form of government to every State ; though I 
believe it clearly confers upon us the authority to 
deal with the question of suffrage in all the States. 
Nor do I here refer to the constitutional amendment 
abolishing slavery, and giving Congress the power, 
by appropriate legislation, to enforce such abolition ; 
though I hold it to be perfectlj'' clear that under this 
clause the power over the ballot is given, since a man 
without it, according to the principles of radical de- 
mocracy and the revolutionary authorities already 
referred to, is a slave — the slave of society, if not the 
chattel of an individual master. I waive these points, 
and rest the case solely on the ground of the autho- 
rity of the nation to do what it pleases v/ith rebels 



whose revolt became a stupendous civil war, and 
was crushed by the power of war. That, sir, js the 
impregnable ground on which I stand, and I chal- 
lenge all assailants. The revolt grew in its propor- 
tions till it became a civil, territorial war. We 
blockaded the rebel coast ; we exchanged prisoners ; 
we conducted the conflict according to the laws of 
war and the law of nations. The rebels became pub- 
lic enemies, and by the power of our resistless hosts 
we conquered them. As conquered public enemies 
their rights were all swept away, all melted in the 
fervent heat of their devilish tre.-ison and war. Not 
a respectable jurist in the Union will dispute this 
proposition, for the principles of the law of nations 
which govern the conduct of a civil war, and define 
the rights of the ])arties to it, are precisely those 
which pertain to the conduct of a foreign war. If 
this is not the settled law of nations, settled also 
emphatically bv the Supreme Court of the United 
States, then'uothing is settled, and nothing is capa- 
ble of settlement. The report of the reconstruction 
committee, already referred to, which expresses 
doubt as to the power in question, asserts that " with- 
in the limits prescribed by humanity the conquered 
rebels were at the mercy of the conquerors. That a 
Government thus outraged had a most perfect right 
to exact indemnity for the injuries done and security 
against the recurrence of such outrages in the future 
would seem too clear for dispute. What the nature 
of that security should be ; what proof should be re- 
quired of a return to allegiance ; what time should 
elapse before a people thus demoralized should be 
restored in full to the enjoyment of political rights 
and privileges, are questions for the law-making 
power to decide, and that decision must depend on 
grave considerations of public safety and the general 
welfare." This language covers the whole ground 
contended for. The power exists, and Congress 
alone must determine what is demanded by " consid- 
erations of the public safety and the general wel- 
fare." The question before' us to-day is one of ne- 
cessity and expediency, and not of power ; a question 
of fact, rather than a question of law. 

On this question, Mr. Speaker, I think there is 
very little ground for disagreement among loyal men. 
If the colored millions of the South need any earth- 
ly good supremely, and need it soo", it is a share in 
the governing power. Let us not mock them by the 
hope of it at some time in the distant future, condi- 
tioned upon alternatives which we tender to their 
enemies, but grant it now, as their imperative and 
instant necessity. They are at this moment pros- 
trate and helpless under the heel of their old tyrants. 
But for the partial succor afPirded by the Freedmen's 
Bureau their condition would be far more deplorable 
than that of slavery itself. Although the civil rights 
bill is now the law, none of the insurgent States al- 
low colored men to testify when white men are par- 
ties. The bill, as I learn from General Howard, is 
pronounced void by the jurists and courts of the 
South. Florida makes it a misdemeanor for colored 
men to carry weapons without a license to do so from 
a probate judge, and the punishment of the offence 
is whipping and the pillory. South Carolina has 
the same enactments ; and a black man convicted of 
an offence who fails immediately to pay his tine is 
whipped, A magistrate may take colored children 
and apprentice them for alleged misbehavior with- 
out consulting then- parents. Mississippi allows no 
negro living in any corporate town to lease or rent 
lands. Cunning legislative devices are being invent- 
ed in most of the States to restore slavery in fact. 
Without the ballot in the hands of the freedmen, 
local law, re-enforced by a public opinion more ram- 
pant against them than ever before, will render the 
civil rights bill a dead letter, and in the future, as it 
has been in the past, the national authority will be 
set at defiance. Even should the civil rights bill be 
enforced, it would be a palliative and not a cure, 



60 



since the risjht to sue, to testify, to make contracts, 
and to own property may be lawfully enjoyed with- 
out commandinpf a "tithe of the respect with which the 
ballot arms every man who wields it. This is the 
sure refiipje and lielpof th ■ froedmen, and Con<;ress 
has the same power to secure it that it has to with- 
hold it from the rebels ; the same power to make suf- 
frage impartial that it has to prescribe any other con- 
dition whatever in the reconstruction of these States. 
If, as is alk'<xed, im such power exists over the 
loyal States, that certainly is no reason why we 
should not exercise it where wc hare the power. 
With the authority unquestionably in our hands to 
disfranciiise all the rebels, the plan reported by the 
Joint Committee leaves the ballot in their hands. 
With stranije and lavish liberality even the leaders 
of the rebellion are to be clothed with this sovereijin 
attribute. They may not hold ofHce, but they may 
confer it. The pirate Semmes shall not be probate 
judpe, but his baUot shall be counted in determininor 
who 'jliall fill the office, and so shall the ballots of the 
traitors who recently tried to make piracy honorable 
in Alabama. Genera! liCC cannot be Pr-sident of 
the United States, nor Governor of Virj^nnia, but he 
can march to the polls with his unhung^ confederates 
as the equal before the law, and under the old 
flas, of the loyalists whose valor saved the Republic. 
• The k'frioris of armed traitors who fought against the 
nation four years, and deluijed it in sorrow and 
blood, are all to be crowned with the honor and dig- 
nity of the ballot ; and, as if to make treason respec- 
table and loyalty odious, the colored people of the 
country, whose enslavement caused the war, and 
who furnished two hundred thousand soldiers in 
crushing the rebellion, are to be handed over to the 
unbridled hate and fury of their old masters. 

One would naturally have supposed that vanquish- 
ed rebels would be glad enough to escape with their 
lives, and that Congress, in conferring uuon them 
the franchise, would at least atone for tiiis unlooked 
for and undeserved liberality by a policy of justice, 
if not of gratitu<le, toward the iiegrocs, whose loyal- 
ty was never questioned, and whose strong arms 
helped strike down the enemies of the nation. One 
would have supposed that if any party must be dis- 
franchised it would be the rebels, and that loyal men 
would govern the country they had saved by their 
valor. I am quite sure that neither the copperheads 
nor the rebels themselves, till they were caressed by 
the Executive, ever dreamed of this cougressioua"l 
discrimination in favor of treason. Sir, it will glad- 
den the heart of every traitor in the Union. No loyal 
man can defend it with a good conscience. Its re- 
creancy is aggravated by every fact which comes to 
us respecting the situation in the South. The gen- 
eral feeling there against the free Imen is that of in- 
tense l.o utility and envenumed hate. The institution 
of slaxer*', througli the instinct of a common inter- 
est, accorded to tiie negro some privileges ; but now 
he has literally ''no rights which white men are 
bound to resfiect." Sharing no longer the measure 
of consideration which pertained to his condition as 
a slave, he is regarded as a despised outcast, and 
treated like a dog. A feeling scarcely less intoler- 
ant is evinced toward the t'nw loyal' white men in 
these States, who in many localities are living in 
constant drea I of violence and murder, and are fre- 
quently waylaid and shot. Quite recently I have 
received a letter from a gentleman of intelligence 
and worth in one of the Southern States, in which he 
says that he and his friends and neighbors, who have 
been hunted in the mountains like deer all through 
the war because they refused to take up arms agiiust 
the country, having had their houses plundered or 
burned, tiieir p.operty destroyed, and themselves re- 
duced to begsjary, are still living in constant dread 
of assassination; and he begs me, if possible, to pro- 
cure for them from the Secretary of War transporta- 
tion to the North. This is a single instance among 



raauT of the actual condition and treatment of the 
loyalists of the South, under the fiendish domination 
of men who have becnironically styled ''conquered.' ' 
Sir, in heart and purpose they are less conquer ed 
than before the war. If possible they hate the Y an- 
kees, with their free schools and fi'ee institutions, 
more tlian ever. I believe their wrath is more and 
more a consuming fire. Down in the very dejiths of 
their souls they despise the Union, its generals, its 
soliliers, its statesmen, its prosperity, its peace. Up- 
on the Frcedmen's Bureau and the civil rights bill 
they pour out the sincerest and the most heartfelt 
curses. Nut a man has been found among them wlio 
does not defend the right of secession, and vindicate 
the rebel cause. Tliev choose as their Senators and 
Re])resentntives in Congress and for the highest 
ollices in the States the most conspicuous and guilty 
of their unrepentant traitor chiefs. They insult the 
old flag and scoff at our national songs. They com- 
memorate the deeds and honor the tombs of t heir 
grandest villains, and refuse to the loyal colored 
people of the South the coveted privilege of strewing 
flowers over the graves of our heroes who died that 
the Republic might live. They crown treason as tlifi 
highest \irtue, and elevate murder to the rank of a 
fine art. Their newspapers are reeking with the 
foulest and most atrocious sentiments, and their man- 
ifest purpose is to scatter the baleful fires of discord 
and hate throughout the South. Under this new 
" reign of terror," emigration to the South, which we 
hoped would regenerate it, is interdicted, while tlie 
loyal men already there are looking about them for 
the means of speedy escape. Such is the Eden of 
blessedness and beauty which has been chiefly evok- 
ed by " my policy," a.nd such are the people in 
whose hands Congress proposes to leave the powers 
of government, while it withholds the ballot from the 
only peoi)le whose redeeming agency and co-operat- 
ing grace can restore order, liberty, and peace. 

And these people, Mr. Speaker, who have ''refin- 
ed upon villainy till it wants a name," whose hearts 
are thus impregnated with the most rancorous hate 
toward the freedmen, and whose ascendancy over 
the South is hourly extending in all directions, are 
expected to give the ballot to the negro, if only we 
provide that otherwise he shall not be counted in the 
basis of representation. Sir, they will do no such 
thing. They would see the negro in Paradise, soon- 
er than see him with the ballot in his hands. The 
madness which rushed into the rebellion in the inter- 
est of slavery, and which to-day, instead of being 
tamed by suffering and trial, is fiercer than ever be- 
fore, will never extend justice to these people. The 
much-talked-of " war of races," ending in negro ex- 
termination, would be far more probable. I am cer- 
tainly ready to vote, as I have done, for reducing re- 
presentation in the revolted States to the basis of 
actual voters. No man could defend his refusal to 
do so ; but I believe the rebels, with the President 
at their back, will never agree to any such anumd- 
ment of the Constituti.m, and that with tlieir allies in 
the North they will be able to defeat it. Neither 
with nor without such an amendment, therefore, in 
my judgment, is there any well-grounded hope for 
justice from the rebel class. The decision of the 
case would require j'ears of time, since it would in- 
volve the questicui whether nineteen or twenty-seven 
States are required to amend the Constitution ; and 
the Supreme Court could not pass upon the point 
till nineteen States had ratified the amendment. 
During all this time the freedmen would be conunit- 
ted to the tender mercies of their enemies instead of 
sharing with ;hem at once the powers of government. 

Sir, why should we decline a present liuty winch 
is as clear and as palpable as the sunlight ? Why 
impiously propose to red-handed tiaitors and assas- 
si'is that" they may trample down the precious rights 
of four million helpless but loyal people, if only it 
shall be agreed that these downtrodden millions shall 



61 



not be represented in Conojre.ss ? Why offer them a 
proposition which, if accepted, mio^ht be as fatal to 
the interests of the colored race as would have been 
the acceptance of the offer of President Lincoln to 
leave that race in bondapjc if the rebels would lay 
down their arms within a stipulated time ? As I 
have already shown, the power to do what wo wish 
is in our hands. Conjrress can enact a statute secur- 
ing impartial suffrage in all the insurgent States, in 
which civil government is totally overthrown, and 
over which our power is supreme. Congress can 
pass enabling acts, as opportunely proposed by my 
distinguished friend from Pennsylvania [Jlr. Stevens], 
providing for the calling of State Conventions in 
those States to form constitutions, and fixing the 
qualifications of voters. Congress, if it deems it ex- 
pedient, can disfranchise the rebels, or any portion 
of them, and refuse admission to the rebellious States 
till they have secured impartial suffrage to their peo- 
ple. And finally, Congress, if constitutional amend- 
ments are necessary, can propose such as will ac- 
cord with justice and the rights of man, and will 
therefore have the strongest pledge of their ultimate 
success ; while, in the moan time, whatever obsta- 
cles may be thro'vn in our way by the accic'ental oc- 
cupant of the W hite House, the great cause of loy- 
alty and freedom will be strengthened and fortified 
by every honest and manly endeavor to serve it. 

But it is said, Mr. Speaker, that the people are not 
ready for so radical a policv, and that while the re- 
construction of the rebel States on a solid and endur- 
ing basis is very desirable, we must accept the ne- 
cessity which compels us to regard the temper of 
the public feeling and the practical effects upon the 
harmony of the Union party which advance measures 
would be likely to produce. 

Sir, I defend the people against this accusation 
against their intelligence and loyalty, ily own ex- 
perience is that politicians are generally, if not inva- 
riably, behind the people, and rather inclined to block 
up the path of popular progress than to clear the 
way. This was undoubtedly true during the war, 
and every intelligent man can recall proofs of it in 
abundance. The people were ready for a radical 
policy in the first year of the conflict, as was shown 
by the proclamation of General Fremont, of Septem- 
ber 2, 18t)l. It was hailed with nearly universal 
joy by the Republican masses, while every leadnig 
Democratic paper in the country warmly approved 
it. So intense and wide-sprr'ad was the feeling of 
enthusiastic loyalty among the people from the firing 
upon Fort Sumter down to the revocation of this 
anti-slavery order, that party lines seemed utterly 
forgotten, and the Democratic organization in fact 
ceased to exist. Copperhead Democracy was a 
sprout from the Executive edict which Kentucky 
procured in the interest of slavery ; but the people, 
at every stage of the conflict, received with open 
arms and grateful hearts every earnest man who 
came forward, and every vigorous war measure 
which was proposed. 

Sir, why were the Union men defeated in the fall 
of 1S02? It was because the people feared that 
General iMcClellan carried the Government in his 
pocket, and had no faith in his conservative policy, 
which bore no good fruits. The men who failed to 
get back to the succeeding Congress were generally 
the tiaiid men who counseled policy ; while the 
Radicals who denounced McClellan, and preached 
the anti-slavery gospel boldly, were successful. 
Why did the Unionists sweep the country in the 
next congressional elections ? It was because of 
their bolder and more pronounced Radicalism. 
Why have our public men failed before the people 
in the political conflicts of the past twenty years ? 
Not, certainly, because they outran the people in 
radical progress, but because the peoi)le loved 
courage, and felt that bolder leadership was de- 
manded. For the truth of this I appeal to gentle- 



men on this floor who have made political life a 
profession, and who are most familiar with the 
history of American politics. 

A servant of the people needs to have faith in the 
people. In dealing with a great question involving 
the reconstruction of Government and regeneration 
of society in nearly half the territory of the Republic, 
he has no right to be " a nejzative expression, or an 
unknown quantity, in the algebra which is to work 
out the problem." He has no right to say that the 
pecple are not ready for a given policy, if he himself 
understands it, and is convinced that it is juEt and 
necessary. On the contrary, he will tlnd it most 
safe to accept our democratic theory, that the people 
are capable of understanding their affairs, and of 
managing them through honest and fearless repre- 
sentatives. What our politicians most need to-day 
is faith, faith in the penple, faith in justice, and 
then to add to their faith courage. If the policy 
you propose is right, nothing is so safe as to trust 
the people ; if it is crooked, a weak and shallow ex- 
pedient, a truce with justice, and not a real peace, 
then nothing could be more unsafe than an appeal to 
the voice of the people, which finally will be the 
voice of truth. 

The people, you say, are not ready for negro 
ballots in the insurgent States. Sir, I would be 
glad t.) have the proof of that. Since the outbreak 
in 1861 they seem to have been rt-ady for whatever 
has come iu the rapid and stirring march of events. 
They were ready for the war, appalling as it was, 
and utterly foreign to their habits and tastes. When 
it came, as I have shown, they were ready for 
radical measures iu its prosecution. They were 
ready, or soon became ready, to arm the negroes 
against their masters, and to demand the complete 
enia- cipation of the millions in chains. They were 
ready to sacrifice the lives of more than three hun- 
dred thousand brave men to save the Republic from 
dismemberment and ruin. The\^ were ready to send 
sorrow into millions of households, and to entail 
upon their children a weary burden of debt, in order 
that freedom snculd bear rule in these States. They 
were ready, when the war was ended, to demand 
the just chastisement of the great national criminals 
who were the instigators of the desolating conflict. 
They were ready to sanction the policy of a Freed- 
men's Bureau to guard and care for the men and 
women made nominally free by the power of war. 
They were ready to pass a constitutional amend- 
ment abolishing slavery forever, and arming Con- 
gress with the power, by appropriate legislation, 
to make such abolition effective. They were ready 
to crown the negro with the honors of a soldier of 
the Republic, and ask him to help to defend it against 
its assassin-, and thereby to pledge themselves 
before God and man that he should thenceforward 
share all the rights enjoyed by white citizens. They 
were ready to say, in January la.-vt, through their 
Representatives in this Hall, by a vote of 116 to 5t, 
that no man under the exclusive jurisdiction of the 
national Government should be deprived of the 
ballot on account of race or color; and tliey have 
been disappointed, I am very sure, in the long delay 
of like action in the Senate. And they were ready, 
speaking through overwhelming majorities in both 
Houses of Congress, and in defiance of the Execu- 
tive, to indorse the civil rights bill, which lacks only 
one short step of reaching the ballot, and the prin- 
ciples of which can only be defended by a lo"-ic 
which necessitates the grant of it as the grandest 
of all civil rights, and the pledge and shield of 
them all. 

Mr. Speaker, a people who have proved them- 
selves ready for all this will be found ready to move 
steadily forward towards the complete accomplish- 
ment of their grand purpose. Jlost assuredly they 
will not turn back, nor pause in their course. Their 
schooling during the past five years has armed them 



62 



against fear, and the man who says they are not 
reaily for all moasuros required to make good to the 
nation the righteous ends of the war impeaches both 
their intelligence and their patriotism. The people 
are not ready 1 This is the cry which is daily rung 
out hero from a chorus of voices. We ourselves 
are all ready, individually, for the most radical 
policy, if the country would sustain us. Impartial 
suSVage is openly indorsed as the true doctrine, 
whicii, in due season, tiie people will be prepared to 
accept. They may be ready, we are told, after the 
fall elections, and the hope is frequently expressed 
that then we shall meet the issue squarely. Almost 
everybody, save the most unblushing copperheads, 
says that negro voting in the South is the true 
reconstruction, and is absolutely necessary if the 
rebels are to vote ; but the country is not ripe for it. 
" Personally," as Ilenry Clay said of the annexation 
of Texas,' all of us " would be glad to see it," but the 
issue is premature. 

Sir, gentlemen are themselves premature, in all 
such statements. The people are ready, in this 
battle of politics, and would gladly go to the front if 
they could, leaving the politicians to struggle in the 
rear. And if the voice of the loyal millions could 
be faithfully executed to-day, treason would be 
made infamous, traitors would be disfranchised, 
and the loyal men of the South, irrespective of 
color, would take the front seats in the work of re- 
construction and government. Do you doubt this ? 
If there is roal uuiou among Union men everywhere, 
upon any single point, it is in their absolute deter- 
mination to make sure the fruits of their victory, 
through whatever measures may be found ueeful. 
Sir, remembering the past, can any man really be- 
lieve the loyal masses will take fright at the spec- 
tacle of negro ballots in the regions blasted by 
treason ? All civil government there is overthrown. 
The President himself has so officially declared. 
The governments extemporized there by himself are 
purely military, and so far as they have assumed to 
be more than that they are simply usurpations. 
This is also perfectly understood by th« country. 
The work of organizing civil governments in these 
regions belongs to their people, subject entirely to 
the control and direction of Congress. This, too, 
has been officially admitted by the President. And 
now, if Congress, at this session, should pass the 
enabling act referred to, reported by the venerable 
gentleman from Pennsylvani v, authorizing the hold- 
ing of conventions to form new State governments, 



and prescribing the same rule of impartial suffrage 
as was done by this House for the District of 
Columbia, would the people revolt against it Y 
Would they even be offended ? Does any intelligent, 
fair-minded man reallv believe it 7 The restoration 
of civil government in the South is undeniably 
necessary. That Congress alone, in co-operation 
with the people, can do this, is equally certain. 
The mode of organizing civil government in re- 
gions under the national jurisdiction is perfectly 
fi'.miliar to the people, and well settled by long and 
uniform practice. Who, then, shall be alaimu i, if 
Congress, in rightfully initiating new governments, 
shall secure a voice to the colored millions who 
constitute more than two fifths of the people, and an 
overwhelming majority of those who are loyal ? 
What Union man will recoil from a policy of im- 
partial justice ? Do we still so love our " Southern 
brethren" that we must necessarily give them the 
ballot, and so sympathize with their tastes and 
dread their ill-will that we must deny it to the 
freeJmen? Are the people to be dealt with as 
idiots or madmen on this subject, and counted 
rational on every other ? Sir, let us put away timid 
counsels, and face the truth like men. Let us be 
wise to-day. Let us have faith in the sturdy com- 
mon sense and unquenchable loyalty and patriotism 
of the people, as becomes these who have seen them 
confront the greatest of trials, and never yet found 
them wanting. Let us not doubt, for a moment, 
that they will sustain us, if we ourselves have the 
courage which " mounteth with occasion," and will 
only " dare do all that may become a man." Above 
all, let us remember that Providential guidance 
which in our trials hitherto has favored us exactly 
in the degree we have allied our cause to justice, 
and withheld Irom us the coveted prize of success 
as often as we have sought it at the expense of the 
rights of man. That same Providential discipline 
will most assuredly go with us to the end, whether 
we bravely meet the great duties of the crisis or 
prove ourselves unequal to our day and our work. 
Nothing, therefore, is so safe, and so sure to win, 
as the policy which shall make tbis truth our guide. 
God give us faith in His counsels, and courage to 
follow them ! And let us not forget that — 

" The wise and active conquer difHculties 
By daring to attempt thorn ; sloth and folly 
Shiver kuiI shrink at sight of trial and hazard, 
And iniike the impossibility they fear." 



Regeneration hefore Iteconstruction, 



sipeeoh: OIF 

Hon. aEOEGE W. JULIAN, 

Ik the house OF KEPEESENTATIVES, January 28th, 1857. 



The House having under consideration 
House bill No. 543, to restore to the States 
lately in rebellion their political rights, and 
the amendment thereto proposed by Mr. 
Stevens — 

Mr. Julian said : 

Mr. Speaker : In view of the time already 
consumed in the discussion of the measure now 
before us, and the general desire of members 
to reach an early vote on the pending motion 
to commit, I shall endeavor to address the 
House as briefly as possible ; and I therefore 
prefer, on this occasion, to submit my views 
without interruption. I cannot support the 
amendment proposed by the gentleman from 
Pennsylvaraa (Mr. Stevens) in its present 
form; but I shall not vote to send it to the 
Committee on Reconstruction at this late hour 
in the session. I believe the time has come 
for action, and that having this great subject 
now before us we should proceed earnestly, 
and with as little delay as may be, to mature 
some measure which may meet the demand 
of the people. Nearly two years have elapsed 
since the close of the war, during the whole 
of which time the regions blasted by treason 
have been subject to the authority of Congress; 
and yet these regions are still unprovided with 
any valid civil governments, and no loyal man 
within their limits, black or white, is safe in 
his person or estate. The civil rights act and 
the Ereedmen's Bureau bill are set at open 
defiance, while freedom of speech and of the 
press are unknown. The loyal people of these 
districts, with sorely-tried patience and hopes 
long deferred, plead with us for our speedy 
interposition in their behalf; and even the 
conquered rebels themselves, who are supreme 
in this general reign of terror, seem to be 
growing weary of their term of lawlessness and 
misrule. Sir, let us tolerate no further pro- 
crastination ; and while we justly hold the 
President responsible for the trouble and mal- 
administration which now curse the South and 
disturb the peace of the country, let us remem- 
ber that the national odium already perpetu- 
ally linked with the name of Andrew Johnson 
will be shared by us, if we fail in the great 
duty which is now brought to our doors. 

Mr. Speaker, my first objection to the amend- 
ment proposed is that it practically confounds 
the distinction between treason and loyalty 
by allowing the elective franchise to the great 



body of the criminals who strove, through four 
bloody years, to destroy the nation's life. No 
such policy can have my sanction. The sixth 
section of the amendment, which seeks to 
guard against this by the affidavit which it 
requires, would prove a delusion and a snare. 
I will read the form of the oath which it pre- 
scribes : 

I, A. B., do solemnly svvenr, on the Holy Evangel- 
ists of Almighty God, that on tho 4th day of March, 
18G4, and at all times thereafter, 1 would willinijly 
have complied with tho requirements of tho proclama- 
tion of the President of the United Statei, issued on the 
8th day of December, 18G3, had a safe opportunity of so 
doing been allowed me ; th:it on iha saiu 4th of March, 
18G4, and at ail times therealter, I was opposed to the 
continuance of the rebellion and to the establishment 
of the so-called confederate government, and volun- 
tarily gave no aid or encouragement thereto, but 
earnestly desired the success of the Union, and the 
suppression of all armed resistance to the Government 
of the United States ; and thst I will henceforth faith- 
fully support the Constitution of the United States and 
the Union of the States thereunder. 

Sir, of what value would be such an oath ? 
In exacting it, instead of protecting the rights 
of loyal men we should build a safe bridge 
over which every rebel in the South could 
pass back into power. How could perjury he 
assigned upon such an affidavit ? By what 
process could the prosecutor prove, on the trial, 
the hidden purpose or the secret intention of 
the party ? I have little faith in the oaths of 
rebels under any circumstances. If our ex- 
perience in the late war establishes any 
general rule in such cases, it is that the oath 
of a traitor proves nothing but the perjury of 
the villain who takes it. Most assuredly we 
could not rely upon it where the man who 
swears runs no risk of being brought to ac- 
count; and the exaction of such an oath of 
men who have ruthlessly lifted their hands 
against their country is scarcely less than a 
mockery. 

But if it be granted that this oath would be 
honestly taken, it does not follow that we 
should now restore the franchise on any such 
cheap and easy conditions. Are we willing 
thus to degrade and belittle this great right, 
the highest expression of citizenship, and its 
truest safeguard ? Must we make haste to 
share the governing power of the country 
with the rebel hordes who fought us nearly 
three years, because they grew weary of their 
enterprise on the 4th day of March, 1864, and 
desired then to give it up ? Is treason against 
the nation an ofl'ense so slight, an afiair so 



6-4 



trifling, that no real atonement for it shall be 
denaanded? Sir, these are grave questions, 
and the state of our country to-day demands 
that Congress shall ponder them. The 
citizen's duty of allegiance and the nation's 
obligation of protection are reciprocal. The 
one is the price of the other, and the compact 
is alike binding upon both parties. "When 
the rebels broke this compact b}' attempting 
the crime of national murder their right of 
citizenship was forfeited, and the nation has 
the undoubted right to declare the conse- 
quences of that forfeiture by law. It not 
only has the right, but in my judgment is 
sacredly bound to exercise it. And why? 
Because, in the language of Vattel, " Every 
nation is obliged to perform the duty of self- 
preservation." The only solid foundation of 
national security is the allegiance of the 
citizen; and the most solemn duty which is 
at this moment devolved upon the Congress 
of the United States is the duty of keeping 
the Government of the country in the hands 
of loyal men. ]S o Government can be secure, 
and no Government deserves to live, which 
allows its enemies a common and equal voice 
Avith its friends in the exercise of its powers. 
This nation has hitherto recognized this prin- 
ciple. In the very first years of the Eepublic, 
Congress sanctioned the perpetual disfran- 
chisement of the leader and principal officers 
of Shay's rebellion; and the acts of Congress 
which warrant the exercise of this power of 
disfranchisement stand in full force and un- 
challenged on your statute-books. Congress, 
during the rebellion, deprived of all rights of 
citizenship those who deserted from the mili- 
tary or naval service, or who, after being 
"duly enrolled," left the United States or 
their military districts to avoid a draft. 
Certainly these ofienses are no greater than 
the crime of treason, persisted in for successive 
years. The authority of Congress in all such 
cases rests upon the universal law of nations. 
It grows out of the contract of allegiance and 
the duty of every nation to preserve its own 
life ; and therefore no trial and conviction by 
any judicial tribunal are necessary as a con- 
dition of the declared forfeiture. The forfei- 
ture is not declared as a punishment for the 
violation of any criminal law, but as a safe- 
guard against national danger. It is an ex- 
pression of the same policy which excludes 
aliens from the rights of citizens. The power 
is not unconstitutional, for our fathers, in 
framing the Constitution, recognized the law 
of nations, as they were compelled to do, in 
launching the Eepublic among the independ- 
ent Powers of the world. Nor is it at all 
affected by the question whether the districts 
lately in revolt are States in the Union or 
territorial provinces. In both States and 
Territories the national authority must be 
held paramount as to the rights of citizenship, 
which has uniformly been regarded as a na- 
tional question. If the second section of the 
first article of the Constitution gives to the 
States the power to say who shall vote, this 
must necessarily be understood to apply onl-^ 



to those who are citizens of the United States, 
since otherwise the national authority might 
be overthrown by aliens in our midst in 
combination with citizens. The late war for 
the Union has been carried on at immense 
cost for the purpose of demonstrating to all 
the world that we are h iiatioii ; and every 
nation, according to the high authority already 
quoted, "has a right to every thing that can 
ward otf imminent danger, and keep at a dis- 
tance whatever is capable of causing its ruin; 
and from that very same reason that estab- 
lishes its right it has also the right to the 
things necessary to its preservation." 

Mr. Speaker, with what face can we de- 
nounce the President for his wholesale par- 
dons, and charge him with making treason 
honorable and loyalty odious, if we ourselves 
voluntarily clothe with the honor and dignity 
of the ballot the men who have forfeited all 
their rights by their crimes against their 
country ? With what consistency can we 
declaim against the monstrous blood-guilti- 
ness of treason while we extend to the traitor 
the right hand of political fellowship? Sir, 
not a single rebel has yet expiated his crime 
on the gallows. Not one has even been tried. 
Neither confiscation nor exile has been the 
portion of the armed assassins and outlaws who 
summoned to their untimely graves more than 
three hundred thousand heroes of the Re- 
public, and made the civilized world stand 
aghast at the recital of their crimes. I do not 
say we should disfranchise the rebels because 
the President has allowed them to go un- 
punished, but that loyal men alone can be 
trusted to govern the country they have saved ; 
and that the false clemency of the Executive 
is the exact reverse of a good reason for re- 
storing traitors to power. Nor do I argue 
that perpetual disfranchisement will certainly 
be necessarj', but that the nation, for its own 
safetj', should withhold the ballot from its 
enemies till they have proved themselves fit 
to cast it. No such proof can be adduced. 
On the contrary, the spirit of treason is now 
quite as reeking and defiant in the revolted 
districts as at any time during the war. In 
the sunshine of the President it has sprouted 
up into new and more vigorous forms of life, 
while repentant rebels are unknown, save in 
the sense of regretting the failure of their 
treason. Sir, I hope the Thirty-Ninth Con- 
gress will not sully its good name by con- 
founding the friends of the country with its 
enemies in the reconstruction and government 
of the districts blighted by treason, and thus 
trample down the great principle that alle- 
giance to the nation is the condition of citi- 
zenship and the bulwark of our freedom. To 
do this would be to surrender oui strongest 
weapons to the President and his rebel allies. 
It would be disloyalty to the great cause 
which would thus again be imperiled, and 
bring dishonor upon the graves of our 
martyred legions, who perished in deadly 
encounter with the traitors whom we now 
propose to restore to their lost rights. 

Mr. Speaker, I further object to the measure 



65 



before us, that it is a mere enabling act, look- 1 
ing to the early restoration of the rebellious 
districts to their former places in the Union, 
instead of a well-considered frame of govern- 
ment, contemplating such restoration at some 
indeiinite future time, and designed to fit 
them to receive it. They are not ready for 
reconstruction as independent States on any 
terms or conditions which Congress might 
impose ; and 1 believe the time has come for 
us to say so. "We owe this much to their mis- 
guided people, whose false and feverish hopes 
have been kept alive by the course of the Ex- 
ecutive and the hesitating policy of Congress. 
I think I am safe in saying that if these dis- 
tricts were to-day admitted as States, with the 
precise political and social elements which we 
know to exist in them, even with their rebel 
population disfranchised and the ballot placed 
in the hands of radical Union men onlj^, iri'e- 
spective of color, the experiment would be 
ruinous to the best interests of their loyal 
people and calamitous to the nation. The 
withdrawal of Federal intervention and the 
unchecked operation of local supremacy 
would as fatally hedge up the way of justice 
and equality as the rebel ascendency which 
now prevails. Why? Simply because no 
theory of government, no forms of adminis- 
tration, can be trusted, unless adequately 
supported by public opinion. The power of 
the great landed aristocracy in these regions, 
if unrestrained by power from without, would 
inevitably assert itself. Its political chemistry, 
obeying its own laws, would very soon crystal- 
ize itself into the same forms of treason and 
lawlessness which to-day hold their undis- 
turbed empire over the existing loyal element. 
"What these regions need, above all things, is 
not an easy and quick return to their forfeited 
rights in the Union, but governmejit, the 
strong arm of power, outstretched from the 
central authority here in Washington, making 
it safe for the freedmen of the South, safe for 
her loyal white men, safe for emigrants from 
the Old World and from the northern States 
to go and dwell there; safe for northern 
capital and labor, northern energy and enter- 
prise, and northern ideas to set up their habi- 
tation in peace, and thus found a Christian 
civilization and a living democracy amid the 
ruins of the past. That, sir, is what the 
country demands and the rebel power needs. 
To talk about suddenly building up independ- 
ent States, where the material for such struc- 
tures is fatally wanting, is nonsense. States 
\\\nsi grow, and to that end their growth must 
be fostered and protected. The political and 
social regeneration of the country made deso- 
late by treason is the prime necessity of the 
hour, and is preliminary to any reconstruction 
of States, Years of careful pupilage under 
the authority of the nation may be found 
necessary, and Congress alone must decide 
when and upon what conditions the tie rudely 
broken by treason shall be restored. Con- 
gress, moreover, is as solemnly bound to deny 
to disloyal communities admission into our 
great sisterhood of States as it is to deny the 



rights of citizenship to those who have for- 
feited such rights by treason. 

I have thus far, Mr. Speaker, addressed 
myself to considerations which appeal to men 
of my own political faith. There is a theory 
of reconstruction held by gentlemen on the 
other side of the House, according to which 
the rebels, the moment they laid down their 
arms and confessed themselves vanquished, 
were entitled to resume all their rights as 
citizens, just as if they had had not rebelled, 
and to set in motion the machinery of their 
State governments, be represented in Con- 
gress, and enjoy all and singular the rights 
and privileges of other citizens of the United 
States. Sir, I shall not consume much time 
in noticing this strange theory, which was so 
happily disposed of by the gentleman from 
Ohio [Mr. Shellabarger] on Friday last. I 
must, however, do its friends the honor of 
confessing it to be entirely original. I think 
no such principle can be found in the law of 
nations, I am quite sure there is no histori- 
cal precedent for it, and that the precedents 
are strongly the other way. One of these, and 
a very nottible one, I may refer to, as illustrat- 
ing the difference between the congressional 
and presidential theories of reconstruction. 
I understand that when Satan rebelled 
against the Almighty he was accommodated 
with quarters somewhat more tropical and 
less salubrious than the kingdom he had in- 
voluntarily abdicated. To speak plainly, he 
was plunged into hell; and he "accepted the 
situation." According to one account of the 
transaction he said it was — 

"Better to reign iu hell than serve in heaven ;" 
and he has not been "reconstructed" to this 
day. But according to the modern theory to 
which I refer, the devil, when he was finally 
overpowered and was willing to acknowledge 
it, was that moment entitled to be reinstated 
in his ancient rights in Paradise, exactly as if 
he had not sinned. That I understand to be 
the Democratic theory of reconstruction. But 
Satan, devil as he was, never had the infernal 
audacity to insinuate so monstrous a preten- 
sion ; and it was reserved for the followers of 
Andrew Johnson, nearlj'- six thousand years 
later, to startle the civilized world by its 
avowal. Mr. Speaker, let me not be mis- 
understood here. I do not desire to see the 
rebels follow in the footsteps of their illus- 
trious predecessor. There may have been 
times when it seemed to me they deserved a 
similar treatment. It may even have oc- 
curred to me, in some of my profimer mo- 
ments, that if there is not a pretty respectable 
orthodox hell on the other side of the grave 
for the special discipline of the rebel leaders, 
it would seem to be the grandest oversight 
that divine Providence could possibly have 
committed. But in confronting the dangers 
which now beset our country, I put aside 
these theological fancies ; and what I demand^ 
and all I ask, is that Congress shall organize 
a well-appointed political purgatory, located 
in the rebellious districts, and keep the rebels 



66 



in it until by their penitence and a change of 
their lives they shall satisfy us that they can 
again be trusted with power. Let us put 
them on probation; and should it require ten 
years,_or twenty years, to qualify them for re- 
storation, or secure an outside element strong 
enougli to rule the rebel faction, let the time 
be extended. The grand interests involved 
plead with us to " make haste slowly," while 
voices from the graves of our slaughtered 
countrymen beseech us to " keep none but 
loyal men on guard." When the rebels, con- 
scious of the ruin they have wrought, shall 
wash away their guilt m their tears of genu- 
ine contrition, then, and not till then, let us 
restore them to our embrace. 

And now, Mr. Speaker, if any gentleman 
asks me what plan of govocnmcnt 1 would 
institute for the probation and pupilage of 
these districts I am ready to answer "him. 
But before I do that I desire to say what 
forms of reconstruction I do not favor. In 
the first place. I oppose any cunninglv devised 
scheme like that reported by the gentleman 
from Ohio [Mr. Ashley] from the Committee 
on Territories, with its popular conventions. 
Its committees of safety, its provisional gov- 
ernors, and other machinery designed to meet 
the ugly fact that wo have a bad man in the 
presidential chair, whose usurpations it is 
pretended we must checkmate by these extra- 
ordinary measures. If the President has 
been guilty of high crimes and misdemean- 
ors, let him be impeached and hurled from 
power. I believe he is thus guilty, and there- 
fore I believe our first duty is to' call him to 
account. Instead of gradual approaches and 
flank movements we should confront him at 
once with our accusations and demand his 
trial. Instead of lopping off the branches we 
should strike at the root of our troubles, and 
no significance or insignificance of the execu- 
tive oflice as now filled should stand in the 
way of our constitutional duty. If the Presi- 
dent is not guilty of high crimes and misde- 
meanors, in the sense in which those terms 
were understood by our forefathers; and ac- 
cording to the precedents they had before 
them, then the right of impeachment is not 
even a "scarecrow," as Mr. Jefferson styled 
it. But if I am mistaken, and the country is 
doomed yet longer to endure his maladminis- 
tration, then let us adopt precisely such meas- 
ures of government for the rebellious districts 
as would be necessary and proper if we had an 
honest man in the place of Andrew Johnson, 
thus affording him the opportunity, should he 
seek it, to provoke new conflicts with the 
people by opposing our measures. Should 
his madness fail to supply us, abundantly, 
with the grounds for a successful impeach- 
ment, the sands of his official life will soon 
run out at the worst, while the management 
of the rebel territory demands a policy which 
may last for indefinite years. As the' friends 
of the Constitution and the champions of law, 
we can best perform our duty by adhering to 
the well-settled forms and usages of our re- 
publican institutions. 



I oppose, in the second place, any plan of 
reconstruction which attempts to reconcile 
opposite and utterly irreconcilable theories. 
If the rebellious districts are States, known 
to the Constitution as such, they have the 
right to be represented on this floor and in 
the other end of the Capital. They have all 
the rights of the other independent States of 
the Union, and the work of reconstruction is 
done already. The logic of this theory, if 
accepted, not only vindicates the policy of 
the President, but brands the legislation of 
Congress for nearly six years past as a deli- 
berate usurpation. This is the rebel theory, 
and those who have accepted it, with all its 
consequences, are consistent and brave men, 
who are entitled to the thanks of all the 
enemies of their country. But if you reject 
this theory, then you are driven squarely 
over to the policy of unqualified radicalism, 
for there is no middle ground on which to 
stand. If these districts are not States known 
to the Constitution it must follow inevitably 
that the Constitution knows them only as 
Territories, for which Congress is bound by 
the express words of the Constitution to 
" make all needful rules and regulations." 
Sir, I am opposed to any scheme of compro- 
mise between these theories, and to any plan 
of reconstruction which embodies in it any 
elements of the rebel theory. The policy of 
Congress and the President in reorganizing 
those districts as States, while exercising over 
them powers utterly inconsistent with the 
rights of States, has brought upon us our 
worst troubles, and the sooner we abandon 
it the better it will be for the country. The 
nation needs a manly and straightforward 
policy, and not the weakness and vacillation 
which spring from crooked and ambidextrous 
measures -vchich lend strength to the enemies 
of the Kepublic. 

Mr. Speaker, the theory which deals with 
the rebellious districts as under the exclusive 
jurisdiction of Congress rests upon grounds 
which are logically impregnable. In the first 
place, their old constitutional governments 
were overthrown and destroyed by the rebel- 
lion. This will not be disputed. Second, 
their rebel governments, which followed, 
were destroyed by our arms. This is equally 
certain. Third, their present governments, 
extemporized by the President, are military 
and provisional only, having no validity 
whatever save that which they borrow from 
the continued acquiescence of Congress. The 
President himself can be quoted in support of 
this proposition. And fourth, the rebels 
themselves, having forfeited all their rights 
by their treason, as I have already shown, 
have no authority to institute any sort of 
government within their respective districts, 
until they are expressly empowered so to do 
by Congress. If 1 am right in these positions, 
these districts are so many geographical divi- 
sions of the Kepublic whose people are wholly 
without any valid civil government, and with- 
out any constitutional power to frame such 
government; and being solely under the juris- 



67 



diction of Congress, and having none of the 
powers and attributes of States, they are neces- 
sarily Territories of the United States. As 
such they need government till they are pre- 
pared for readinission, and the machinery of 
territorial governments, older than the Consti- 
tution itseff, is as familiar to the American 
people as that of the State governments. Let 
each of these Territories then have a governor, 
A chief justice, a marshal, and an attorney. 
Let each of them have a Delegate in Congress, 
fitly denied the right to vote, while permitted 
to speak. Let each have a legislature for the 
enactment of local laws, subject to the super- 
vision of Congress. Let Congress declare who 
shall be qualified to vote in these Territories, 
adopting the same rule already established in 
the other Territories of the United States and 
in the District of Columbia. And when local 
supremacy shall defy the national authority 
in any of these Territories, let it be effectually 
curbed by the military power of the United 
States. Under this educational process, I 
would have these rebellious districts trained 
up in the way they should go, whether the 
time required for such training shall prove 
long or short ; while in the mean time every 
inch of their soil will be subject to the national 
authority, and freely open to the energy and 
enterprise of the world. This policy, by 
aationalizing the South, would render life 
and property as secure in Louisiana as in 
Maine. It would tend powerfully to make 
■our whole country homogeneous. It would 
encourage in these wasted regions "small 
farms," thrifty tillage, free schools, closely- 
associated communities, social independence, 
respect for honest labor, and equality of 
political rights." All these blessings must 
follow, if only the nation, having vanquished 
its enemies, will now resolutely assert its 
pow:er in the interest of loyal men, over 
Tegions in which nothing but power is re- 
spected. 

To all this, Mr. Speaker, it will be objected 
•that it contravenes the policy of the constitu- 
tional amendment proposed by Congress at 
our last session, and therefore can not in good 
faith be urged while that amendment is 
pending. Several replies to this objection 
are at hand. First, it must be remembered 
that this amendment was submitted to the 
several States. Congress had no right to 
propose it to unorganized districts which had 
no constitutional governments of any sort, 
and therefore no power to pass upon the 
question. Could we, for example, submit 
this amendment to Colorado or Nebraska, 
before they have been lawfully declared- 
States ! Congress at the last session, might 
have waived all formalities and recognized 
the rebellious districts as States by receiving 
their re}:h'esentatives, as was done in the case 
of Tennessee; but we refused to do this. Con- 
gress even declined to pass the bill reported 
from the Eeconstruction Committee provid- 
ing that these so-called States should be re- 
ceived on their acceptance of the amendment. 
It is perfectly certain, therefore that Congress 



reserved for its future judgment the very 
question which is assumed to have been deci-, 
ded by the objection under notice ; or, that if 
Congress did decide it the decision was the oth- 
er way. The very utmost that can be claimed 
by the champions of the constitutional amend- 
ment is that the question is an open one ; and, 
being an open question. Congress may decide 
it to-day by putting territorial governments 
over these regions, leaving the amendment to 
the disposition of the loyal States, whose rep- 
resentatives m Congress for nearly six years 
past have ignored the existence of disloyal 
States in dealing with the mighty concerns of 
■war and peace and the amendment of the Con- 
stitution itself. I believe the pending amend- 
ment will be ratified ; but in voting to sub- 
mit it I do not think Congress is at all em- 
barrassed in its present action. I can say for 
myself at least, that I am perfectly untram- 
meled, either by my votes in this House, or by 
pledges or committals anywhere ; while I 
believe the general understanding at the last 
session was that the amendment embodied 
provisions which were demanded as national 
safeguards, without pretending to supply any 
final solution of the problem of reconstruc- 
tion. 

But I reply, in the next place, that even \( 
Congress at the last session bound itself by 
an implied agreement to admit these districts 
as States on their ratification of the amend- 
ment, we are now released from that obliga- 
tion. With singular unanimity and empha- 
sis they have rejected our proposal,and thereby 
left us free. Sir, are we bound to wait here 
five years or ten years, for them to ponder 
the question and reverse their decision, after 
they have already defiantly spurned our offer, 
allowing the rebel power in the meanwhile to 
have free course ? I do not so understand the 
bargain, if any bargain has been made. "We 
have the right to plead our release, and the 
state of the country demands that we shall 
exercise it. Since our session of last summer 
great changes have been wrought in the gen- 
eral feeling of the people. We see daily the 
truth of the old adage that " circumstances 
alter cases." Public opinion has forced Con- 
gress to establish manhood suffrage in the 
District of Columbia, and thereby to say that 
that principle should prevail in all the States 
of the Union. Congress has extended it ovor 
all the Territories of the United States, con- 
stituting an empire large enough to support a 
population of two hundred millions of people. 
Congress has voted for the admission of Colo- 
rado and Nebraska on the fundamental con- 
dition of their acceptance of the same princi- 
ple, and thus advertised all v.'hom it may 
concern that other States yet to be born must 
comply with the same condition. Most cer- 
tainly the like requirement will be made of 
the districts lately in arms against us, what- 
ever may betide the constitutional amend- 
ment. God forbid that we should impose 
conditions upon the virgin States of the 
Northwest, which have never rebelled, and 
whose people to-day are loyal, which we will 



G8 



not exact of the rebels -whp have drenched 
their country in Llood ! Sir, we cannot trifle 
■with a principle so vital, or expose it to any 
sort of hazard. I voted last year against 
restoring Tennessee to her place in the Union, 
hecause I feared she could not he trusted 
■without a mortgage from her securing the 
hallot to her colored loyalists. I hope jny 
fears will prove groundless,, but I shall never 
regret my vote. The loyal people of Mary- 
land to day, black and white, would be safer 
under Federal bayonets than under their local 
governments ; and Congress, where it has the 
power, must exert it against the enemies of 
the country and their s^^mpathizers. I shall 
never vote to restore one of these rebel dis- 
tricts to power as a State, except upon the 
condition that impartial suffrage without re- 
spect to race, color, or former condition of 
slavery, shall be the supreme law within her 
borders. Sir, we can no longer evade the 
solemn duty which the logic of events has at 
last made plain to the lovers of justice; and 
the man who now thrusts constitutional 
amendments in our way might as well quote 
the Crittenden resolutions, adopted by this 
House the day following the first Battle of 
Bull Eun, as the governing principle of the 
Thirty-Ninth Congress. 

I add, finally, and as a conclusion from 
what I have said already, that the second sec- 
tion of the proposed amendment ought never 
to be made a part of the Constitution of the 
United States. It would not now be propos- 
ed, if the question were pending as a new one, 
as our action at this session has plainly indi- 
cated. I voted for it, along with the other 
sections of the amendment, simply as a pro- 
posal to reduce the political power of the reb- 
els to a common level with that of loyal men ; 
but instead of cutting down representation in 
these districts to the basis of actual suffrage, 
I think we are now ready so to extend the 
franchise as to make it commensurate with 
actual representation. An amendment of the 
Constitution securing this result should have 
been proposed at the last session. When, in 
our extremity, we called on the black loyal- 
ists of the South to help us through the red 
sea of war into which our wickedness had 
plunged us, and they responded to our call 
by sending two hiindred thousand soldiers to 
our rescue, it thence-forward became the na- 
tion's duty, from which no escape was mor- 



ally possible, to secure the rights of citizen- 
ship, both civil and political, to the wronged 
and outraged millions of the African race in 
our midst. It thence-forward ought to have 
been counted a shameful proposition, a fla- 
grat affront to common justice and gratitude,, 
for Congress to propose to the rebels, as a 
constitutional amendment, that if they would 
agree to the exclusion of these loyal colored 
men from the basis of representation, we 
would agree to surrender them to the tender 
mercies of rebel State governments, which 
might vvholly deprive them of the sacred right 
of representation. Sir, I hope no such prin- 
ciple will ever defile the Constitution of our 
fathers. Aside from its cold-blooded ingrat- 
itude to our black allies, it is radically vi- 
cious. It impliedly concedes to the States of 
the Union the right to disfranchise male citi- 
izens of the United States over twenty-one 
years old who are innocent of crime, and thus 
strikes at the root of all democracy. If " tax- 
ation without representation is tyranny," and 
Governments derive " their just powers from 
the consent of the governed," the citizen's 
right of representation is as natural and inher- 
ent as the breath of his nostrils. To deprive- 
him of it, unless he himself forfeits it by his 
offences against society, is a crime against his 
manhood, which is the common foundation of 
the rights of all men. It is an offense against 
all free government, for the right of one cit- 
izen to a voice in its public administration is 
precisely the same as the right of every other 
citizen; and no fraction of citizens, however- 
large, can deprive the remainder of their 
common and equal right. To deny this is to 
mock the Declaration of Independence and 
insult the memory of our fathers ; and to in- 
corporate the denial into the Constitution of 
the United States, in words which express or 
imply it, would strengthen the hands of every 
rebel in the South, and comfort the enemies- 
of American democracy throughout the 
world. It would pollute the very foun- 
tains of our national life by the unnatural 
marriage of the Constitution to the foul her- 
esy of State rights, which so recently wrapped 
the Eepublic in the flames of war; while it 
would stand in open conflict with that grand 
central principle of our great Charter which- 
declares that "the United States shall guaran- 
tee to every State in this Union a republican, 
form of government." 



LRBFe'iS 



